Preamble

The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PETITION

Chiswick (Road Proposals)

Sir Barney Hayhoe: I beg leave to present a petition signed by 11,793 people living, working and visiting in and around the Chiswick area of my constituency who are vehemently and determinedly opposed to the damaging, new major road proposals for this lovely part of west London.
I pay tribute to the dedicated work of Michael Robinson, Nigel Birch, Steve Brook and others, who have gathered these many signatures from those stating:
That we are opposed to any new proposals which include major road building in Chiswick and in particular to the new major roads proposed in options 3, 4 and 7 of Stage 2a of the West London Assessment Study.
Wherefore your petitioners pray that your honourable House urges the Right Honourable Paul Channon MP, the Secretary of State for Transport to dismiss from further consideration all proposals for major road building through Chiswick in the light of the destruction of homes and major damage to the environment and local community life these new roads would cause.
And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.
I hope that the House will note, and the Secretary of State will act in accordance with, the petition.

To lie upon the Table.

Orders of the Day — Control of Smoke Pollution Bill

Order for Third Reading read.

Mr. Speaker: I have selected the two verbal amendments in the name of the hon Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter), and it will be convenient to discuss them together.

Mr. Ivor Stanbrook: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It is unusual for the Third Reading of a Bill, for which amendments are printed, to appear on the Order Paper. For the enlightenment of those of us who are riot well acquainted with such matters, will you explain this?

Mr. Speaker: These are verbal amendments—of words. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the amendment paper he will see that they are small amendments to the words in the Bill and do not affect the sense of the Bill. This is unusual, but not unprecedented.

Mr. Ray Powell: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Will we be allowed to speak on the verbal amendments when they are announced—which will, I assume, be at the start of the speech of the hon. Member for Basingstoke?

Mr. Speaker: Yes, of course there will be a debate on the amendments. However, the hon. Gentleman will see from the Order Paper and the amendment paper that it will be a narrow debate.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. You said that these amendments involve changes of words, but I thought that all amendments were changes of words. I took it for granted that if someone put down an amendment to a motion, it would change a word or delete some words. Do I take it that, in future, if someone wants to amend Bills on Third Reading—this is purely for the benefit of future exercises—they will be able to amend them on the basis that they are merely changing a few odd words here and there? Is that in order?

Mr. Speaker: Of course, I look at any amendments on the amendment paper carefully and it is not unprecedented to have verbal amendments. The hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) asked for an explanation. I used the word "verbal" meaning "of a word" rather than "by the mouth". Is that clear?

Mr. Skinner: Yes, right.

Mr. Ray Powell: Further to that point of order, M r. Speaker. This is important—you mentioned that this would be a narrow debate. In fact, it will embrace the Clean Air Acts, and, therefore, could be a wide-ranging debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (M r. Skinner) asked about submitting amendments—we are on Third Reading and I assume that we shall discuss the debates which have taken place prior to this.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member may have a somewhat wider debate when we come to Third Reading, but the first debate is on the Question, That the amendment be made. I think that we should now move to that.

Orders of the Day — Title

Mr. Andrew Hunter: I beg to move, amendment No. 1, in title, leave out 'repeal' and insert 'amend'.
I understand that I may also speak to amendment No. 2, in title, leave out 'to amend'.
Perhaps I should explain that the only controversy about a vote on the Bill has been whether its modest objectives constitute the repealing of the Clean Air Acts or their amendment.
The debate has swayed backwards and forwards. When the Bill was drafted I was advised that it was a repealing measure. Subsequently, informed opinion decided that the modest contents of the Bill amounted to an amending of the Clean Air Acts. No matter of substance arises from the amendments and I commend them to the House.

Ms. Joan Walley: As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) has said, it is extraordinary that we should have reached this stage of a Bill with so little debate. It is a small Bill but it is an important amendment to existing legislation. There has been no discussion of the Bill until this stage, and it is only now that it has come to light that the amendments are necessary. That is because the Bill, as it has been compiled by the parliamentary draftsman, or whoever, overlooks the fact that it deals with the amendment rather than with the repeal of legislation.
I look forward to the Third Reading debate because the Bill is important in the context of air pollution. Until now, we have had only a few words of discussion about the Bill in the House. It is extraordinary that the Bill has got so far without the House examining it in more detail. Hansard deals with the Bill in seven lines:

Orders of the Day — CONTROL OF SMOKE POLLUTION BILL

Bill read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Hunter.]

Bill immediately considered in Committee; reported, without amendment.

To be read the Third time on Friday 14 April."—[Official Report, 3 March 1989; Vol. 148, c. 571.]

It may well be that all legislation is important in terms of the speed and urgency with which it comes to the House. However, I wish that the Secretary of State had the same sense of urgency about bringing forward the green Bill and dealing with the many very important related issues of air pollution. I may not be here at the end of the debate because I have other urgent engagements. However, I have brought these matters to the attention of the House. In case I am not here when the Bill is passed, I should now like to congratulate its promoter on having introduced it. I regret that such an important, albeit minor, change to existing legislation should have got so far without debate. I urge the Government to treat the whole matter of environmental protection with much greater urgency.

Mr. Stanbrook: I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for your assurance that the amendment is in order. However, I am still somewhat mystified about how on Third Reading we can get such a drastic change in the wording of the Bill. The purpose of the Bill is:
To repeal section 16(1)(a) of the Clean Air Act 1956 and to amend section 1 of the Clean Air Act 1968.

The amendment seeks to amend section 16(1)(a) of the 1956 Act and to repeal section 1 of the 1968 Act. The original intention of the Bill was to delete section 16(1)(a) of the 1956 Act and to leave something in section 1 of the 1968 Act after the legislative process. We are now told that that was not the intention, but that it was to leave something of the 1956 Act and to delete section 1 of the 1968 Act.
How on earth is it possible for a Bill to come before the House and go through all its legislative stages with such a decisive and fundamental flaw? Did no one discover that nothing would be left of section 1 of the 1968 Act? Has that only just been discovered? We ought to have some sort of explanation, if only for the satisfaction of the legal draftsman.

Mr. Ray Powell: I am still rather confused about how amendments could have been allowed to be tabled. I do not have the legal knowledge of the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) and I should like to be assured that the amendments are entirely in order. I have no doubt, Mr. Speaker, that you have examined them in detail.
Amendment 1 seeks to leave out "repeal" and insert "amend". There is a profound difference in the meanings of the two words. If we repeal something, we take it away, but if we amend it we merely add to or subtract from what is already there. Those of us who have studied in great depth the Clean Air Acts and the repercussions of any repeal of their clauses or amendments to them, realise that that needs to be thoroughly examined. This morning we have been presented with two verbal amendments—a term that I have not heard before in the House. We have always had amendments that we can study in conjunction with the Acts to see their repercussions. It appals me to think that on a Friday we are discussing such far-reaching effects as are to be found in the Bill.
Smoke has always been prevalent in my area, because it was a mining area. In 1979 there were 7,000 to 8,000 miners in my constituency, all of whom were entitled to receive an allocation of free coal. That meant that coal was the fuel used throughout my constituency. When one stood on Bwlch mountain and looked down over the four valleys of my constituency, on a lovely morning such as this one could see smoke coming from practically every chimney. I arrived in London at the tender age of 17 and lived in Minet drive in Harlesden. I worked at Old Oak common in Acton and used to walk to work, because even in those days I could not afford to take the tube. No one was worried about riding in the tube in those days.
I am not all that old, Mr. Speaker, but perhaps I am a little older than you. In those days, many of us who had come to London used to tie a strip of gauze around the nose and mouth when we were going for a walk and when there was smoke or fog about in London. When I arrived in Acton, which was only about a 20 or 25-minute walk from Willesden and Harlesden, I would find a smear as black as coal on my mouth and on the gauze across my nostrils. That was caused by the pollution in London at that time.
We know, too, of the effect of pollution on this building. We cannot see a number of the statues at Westminster Hall because they were destroyed by pollution. It is therefore essential that at this stage we get right any measures that control air pollution. That is why


I strongly object to amendments being thrown in on a Friday morning without Members who have taken an interest in the matter being able to look at them in detail.

Mr. Win Griffiths: As my hon. Friend will know, I am a new Member of the House. I heard it said that this was an unusual procedure. Can my hon. Friend tell me how many times this procedure has been used and when was the last time that amendments have been presented in this way?

Mr. Powell: I cannot reply to that point, but I posed the same question in a point of order before I started my speech. I realise that my hon. Friend might have been delayed because he was seeking out the amendments to the Bill. I missed Prayers, in fact, because I was informed, as I was coming into the Chamber, that there were amendments to the Bill. I appreciate my hon. Friend's problem, and probably you, Mr. Speaker, can inform him of what has happened.

Mr. Skinner: My information is that the last time that this was done was 18 years ago, but it was done in completely different circumstances. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) has been explaining, we have before us today a Bill whose several stages were rushed through at the end of business one Friday. The Bill was probably planted on the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter). I am not too sure about that, but all the signs are that a Government Whip went along and said, "Shove this forward for a particular Friday in order to block something else." That is what usually happens and, therefore, those very weird circumstances have taken place. It is conceivable that the hon. Gentleman himself was not sure what the issue was all about. It went through on the nod and the result is that we have a Bill that in many ways is so cock-eyed that it should have been taken back.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore is on to a very good point. I am certain that the way in which the Government have pushed through the measure has been an embarrassment to the authorities of the House.
I think, too, that there is another reason for us having this mess, which is that the Prime Minister went green—or mouldy, as some would say—some time ago, and she had to prove that she meant business. So what better than to say, "Let's look as though we are going green on the Clean Air Act and beef it up a bit"? A Whip therefore looked for a participant on the Tory Benches and said to him, "Here you are, we can make it look as though the Tory party is carrying out its green proposals." However, because it is not really a party that is in favour of collective green action, the Government got the whole thing wrong.

Mr. Powell: I agree with my hon. Friend. I understand what he says about the progress of the Bill from stage one. However, I do not know whether I could go as far as to suggest that Whips on either side of the House would have been involved in such matters. I very much doubt whether they would have been involved in any sort of intrigue. You yourself, Mr. Speaker, will accept that Whips would not become involved in such actions.
I shall return to the first amendment, concerning the word "repeal", and what my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover said about the Prime Minister. What appals me is the fact that my secretary and agent—who is a councillor of some 35 years' standing and a justice of the peace, who has received an MBE and is well-respected in my

constituency—was appointed to the national Clean Air Council. She is a miner's widow. She had a great interest in pollution and she regularly attended the meetings. She reported to me regularly about the discussions at those meetings.
Then in 1979, there was an election and the green goddess got to number 10—although she was not as green as she is now. She walked up the yellow brick road and she got to number 10 Downing street. Overnight, the right hon. Lady abolished the Clean Air Council. She dismissed the services of my secretary and agent, Councillor Mrs. Muriel Williams, MBE, JP, with her 35 years' experience in local government and in other areas.
Now, 10 years later, because a big conference was to be held in London, involving 124 representatives from all over the world, the right hon. Lady has become interested in the Clean Air Act 1968. It is a pity that she was not interested in 1979 or 1980 and she did not retain the services of my secretary-agent of 70 years of age to look after the interests of the people in my constituency and in Wales.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: Is it not a fact that, because the Government—for example, under planning laws—have made it much easier for people to develop in areas where previously it was not acceptable, that there will be more pollution rather than less? This sort of amendment will have a direct effect on the quality of life of all our constituents.

Mr. Powell: My hon. Friend is right in saying that there are some considerable problems. I shall illustrate one planning problem and the difficulties caused to some Members of Parliament. We are looking—especially in parts of Wales—for industrialists to come into our areas to invest, because we want industry and we want jobs. Whether they come from Japan or anywhere else, we seek them out to provide jobs in our areas. My hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd), has a problem, because she has a phurnacite plant in Abercwmboi, which produces smokeless fuels. However, the production of those smokeless fuels, causes a tremendous amount of pollution.

Mr. Speaker: The amendment concerns the changing of two words. I believe that what the hon. Gentleman has said is more appropriate to the Third Reading of the Bill.

Mrs. Dunwoody: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, which is related precisely to the wording. It appears that "to amend", which in this case is a verb without any qualifying wording, could create considerable difficulty for the House. I should have thought that the parliamentary draftsmen, who are so careful about the use of the English language, would have told us that such a verb, without any qualification, could create considerable difficulty. Is it not the case that "to amend" must by implication give some indication of the manner in which, how and to what extent it amends? A verbal amendment of this kind will lead my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore, for example, who is developing specific points about smoke control, into considerable difficulty if he does not know in which way the Bill is to be amended and to what extent.

Mr. Speaker: The House sometimes finds itself in difficulties when a Bill goes through all its stages without any debate. The House will know that the Chair is in difficulty, and that it deprecates that practice. However,


such a difficulty has arisen today and that is why, exceptionally, the House must consider amendments on Third Reading.

10 am

Mrs. Dunwoody: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I would never dream of arguing with you, as I know that you are only following precedent—that you will have been given advice and will be aware that such a precedent has been established. The difficulty lies in debating a narrowly drawn amendment that seeks to substitute only one word, but that will basically change the Bill without the House knowing in what manner the Bill is to be changed. While I have no desire to argue with the Chair, the amendment creates enormous problems. If the debate on the amendment is narrowly confined—obviously the Chair will want the right hon. and hon. Members to keep well within the rules of order—the House will have to agree or disagree to the amendment without being perfectly clear as to its exact meaning. The problem is not the amendment itself but the enormous implications that it has for the Bill.

Mr. Speaker: I say again that we are in this difficulty because of what happened. However, the House must observe the rules of order. The debate on the amendment is narrow, but the Third Reading debate is much wider.

Ms. Walley: Further to that point of order, and to my introductory remarks, I believe that you, Mr. Speaker, have been placed in a very difficult situation. Obviously there is no way in which the situation can be redeemed in respect of the Bill and of the whole issue of smoke control and related matters of air pollution. However, I wonder whether you could discuss the situation with whoever has responsibility for such matters, to ensure that the House will face a similar situation again. Then at least something constructive would come out of the Government's clear attempt to ensure that the Prime Minister has some sound evidence to show the nation that she has gone green.

Mr. Speaker: It is not unprecedented for a Bill to go through all its stages on a Friday. However, I repeat that that practice is always deprecated by the Chair. Even small measures should never go through the House of Commons without debate.

Mr. Skinner: Further to that point or order, Mr. Speaker. Normally, it would be difficult for my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) to speak at range over the whole compass of the Bill. However, the Bill passed through all its previous stages in a shabby fashion several Fridays ago, because it was planted in the fist of the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) by the Whips, and he did not know what he had been given. That is the bottom line. That meant that the Bill could not be debated.

Mr. Speaker: That is in the hands of the House. As the hon. Gentleman well knows, it requires only one right hon. or hon. Member to object, and a Bill cannot immediately proceed.

Mr. Skinner: If I had been present, an objection would have been made. The fact that the hon. Member for Basingstoke has not spoken to the Bill at any length today creates another problem. He has given little or no

indication of the Bill's purpose, which leaves the House in a predicament. On the first occasion that the hon. Gentleman is given an opportunity to speak to the Bill, he hardly opens his mouth. As a consequence, the House is left in a quandary.
In the absence of proper discussion, you, Mr. Speaker, would be correct to be more liberal in your interpretation of what can be said on this occasion, as compared with the situation in which full and frank discussion had earlier taken place. In the absence of full and frank discussion, my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore must surely have the right to expand on his argument as to what effect the amendments would have in certain circumstances. In that context, my hon. Friend travelled down a reasonable path.

Mr. Speaker: We are all bound by Standing Orders. The hon. Gentleman in his other incarnation, when he has the difficult responsibility for chairing meetings, is bound by his standing orders.

Mr. Skinner: I get things through on the nod as well.

Mr. Speaker: That is not a very wise thing to do. I may point out that the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) has the right of reply.

Mr. Powell: On only one occasion, at midnight some years ago, have I ever failed to respond to your ruling from the Chair, Mr. Speaker. I well recall the incident, because within two minutes I was going through the front gates. I do not want to do that this morning.
The first amendment seeks to leave out the word "repeal". The argument I was developing about the phurnacite plant at Abercwmboi is important in that respect, because if we repeal the Clean Air Acts of 1956 and 1968, that will have wide implications for the Cynon valley and for the plant. It will allow developers to take certain action which, if we amend the legislation rather than repeal it, they would not be allowed to take. Those are the reasons, Mr. Deputy Speaker, why points of order were earlier raised and developed.
The products of the phurnacite plant are designed to protect the environment, so any amendments to the Bill would directly affect that plant. I presume that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, share the views expressed earlier as to how the House should deal with the two amendments, and as to whether right hon. and hon. Members are in order to develop further arguments about the Clean Air Acts and about the Bill itself. I appreciate that we are not having a Third Reading debate, so I shall not prolong the arguments. Nevertheless, because of the amendments' far-reaching effects, and until such time as the Chair brings me further to order, I shall cite one area of complication that affects my own constituency.
The Rockwool factory produces insulating fibre used in lofts and walls, which has a direct effect on energy conservation in the buildings in which that product is used. The factory produces a lot of smoke. In the Heol-y-Cyw and Pencoed areas, the community council, Ogwr borough council and the county council have been all involved in numerous objections about smoke emissions. That factory produces fibre that is used in energy conservation.
One of the dilemmas that face Members of Parliament, whatever their constituencies, is whether to join forces with the community and the borough or county council in objecting strongly to the pollution of an area or whether, in order to safeguard—in this instance—some 400 jobs, to


try to pacify some of the objectors. Those of use who are concerned about clean air take care to ensure that industrialists who come into such areas at least receive guidance.
All possible precautions have been taken. My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) will have taken action at community level to try to stop the pollution in the area——

Mr. Skinner: My hon. Friend is developing a reasonable argument about smoke and pollution. He may not yet have made up his mind about whether he favours "repeal" or "amend", but if we get on to that ground we shall, I think, be able to discuss the matter at some length and try to ascertain the truth. The crucial issue is whether my hon. Friend is in favour of the amendment or against it. I should like to hear the answer from him, because I am still in some doubt. Once we have heard whether he considers this a good or a bad amendment, we shall be able to dig a few tons of coal.

Mrs. Dunwoody: rose——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Has the hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) finished his speech?

Mr. Powell: No, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I cannot take an intervention on an intervention.

Mr. Powell: I accept what has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). This is an important point.
I have considered the matter carefully. Having tried at the same time to arrive here, read the amendments, listen to the objectors from the league of representatives on the Conservative Benches and be guided by them, by Mr. Speaker and by the Clerk of the House, and having then participated in the debate, I have found it difficult to decide between "repeal" and "amend". You, Mr. Deputy Speaker, with all your experience in the Chair and on the Front Bench, will know the problems with which we are sometimes confronted at this time on a Friday morning. I have decided, however, that I do not want the Act repealed, so I shall support the amendment.

Mrs. Dunwoody: I am a little worried by what my hon. Friend has just said. I went out of the Chamber just now because I was concerned about the narrowness of the amendment. Having obtained a copy of the Oxford English dictionary and looked up the definition of "amend", I think that we are going to get into some difficulty.
The definition gives the French and Latin roots of the word, which I cannot use because, in using a foreign language, I should be out of order. It goes on, however, to explain the various meanings:
to free … from faults, correct … convert … To rectify … To emendate. 1483"—
I had not encountered that. The dictionary also defines "amend" as to make alterations in a Bill before Parliament, to repair, to restore, to heal the sick, to improve, to better and to make amends for an offence.
That seems clear enough, until we begin to consider exactly what is meant here by "amend". Are we to amend specific parts of the wording? Are we to change or make

better, and if so in what manner? Before my hon. Friend accepts the amendment and its implications so readily, will he consider that?

Mr. Powell: My hon. Friend has made a valid point. She said that she could not give definitions in French or Latin because she would be out of order in doing so, but perhaps if she had given a Welsh definition that would have given me some guidance.

Mr. Skinner: I do not accept the point often made in the House that hon. Members cannot speak in other languages. The Prime Minister has several different languages of her own. She has changed her voice so many times that it is unbelievable. When Gordon Reece came along, he said to her, "You have got to lower your voice", so she came in here one day—not long after she had become Prime Minister—with a different voice. Then there is her stentorian-type voice.
As for foreign languages—for I see that you are shuffling in the Chair, Mr. Deputy Speaker—lawyers often use Latin in here.

Mr. Harry Greenway: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker—as this is an intervention on an intervention. Do not the rules of the House lay down that any language used here must be understood by other hon. Members? In that case, a foreign langage would not be ruled out. A language such as Welsh——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I think that the practices of the House are sufficiently well known for us not have a debate on them. We are in danger of having a debate about the use of language rather than about the amendments. Can we get back to them?

Mr. Greenway: I am asking for information.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman consults "Erskine May". That is why we put copies out.

Mr. Skinner: My hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) should use the phrase "ultra vires". The whole thing is ultra vires.

Mr. Powell: All this discussion has come about because something has happened that I understand has not happened for 18 years. I was not a Member 18 years ago, but I am sure that other hon. Members will recall the incident. In all probability, if we looked it up in the Official Report we should find that there was just as lengthy a debate then on the introduction of "verbal" amendments on the Floor of the House.
We have been placed in this position because someone thrust these amendments in front of us five minutes before we came into the Chamber, stopping us from attending Prayers. It makes me wonder whether the House should have been adjourned for 10 or 15 minutes for us to consider whether to insert "amend" or retain "repeal". My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) had the chance to go out and seek advice, and then to pass on that advice to us, for which I am grateful. Having listened to her interpretation of "amend", I am in a dilemma as to whether to accept her advice.

Mr. Stanbrook: I think that the problem is even more difficult to solve than the hon. Gentleman supposes.


Clause 1 clearly amends section 16 of the Clean Air Act 1956, whereas the wording in the title speaks of repealing it. It seems to be common sense, therefore, to change "repeal" to "amend". After all, clause 1 says:
there shall be inserted the words".
That is clearly an amendment rather than a repeal.
However, clause 2, which we are invited to say is a repeal, simply states:
In subsection (1) … after the words … there shall be inserted the words".
Clearly, that is an amendment, not a repeal. In other words, those who are bringing forward these provisions have got them the wrong way round in any event. Whereas one could agree that clause 1 is an amendment to the principal Act, one cannot agree that clause 2 is a repeal of the other principal Act. The wording by itself is an amendment, and that is our difficulty.

Mr. Powell: I have now been advised by a professionally qualified legal representative from the Conservative Benches, the hon. Member for Orpington, and I think that the Chair should be asked to consider this matter. I accept entirely what has been said, and my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich has been concurring with that. If what has been said means that the wording should be turned around and, as on our arrival this morning we found these verbal amendments, perhaps we can seek advice from the Chair or the Clerks to see whether the amendments could be put the other way round. In view of what the hon. Member for Orpington has suggested, if we "repeal" as he suggested and "amend" as in the first amendment, would there be any opportunity for you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to consider whether we would then be in order—or would we be more in order if the amendments were to be reversed? Perhaps the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) who promoted the Bill will agree to the amendments being reversed so that we can get on with debating the amendments. I ask for your guidance on this, Mr. Deputy Speaker, before I continue with my speech.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: If the amendments had not been in order, they would not have been selected.

Mr. Powell: We accept that if they had not been in order, they would not have been selected, but it has been pointed out to us that, to be in order and to carry the meaning that I believe the promoter of the Bill intended, they should be reversed. Is it possible for them to be reversed at this stage as they were tabled only this morning?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman is asking me a question rather different from the one that he posed in the first place. It is the question not whether the amendments are in order in terms of their admissibility under our Standing Orders and the usual test, or whether they would improve the structure of the Bill. The second point is not a matter for me. If the hon. Gentleman is asking whether it would be procedurally possible, the answer is that it may well have been possible at the outset of our proceedings, when the amendments were first brought to the attention of the House. Hon. Members may have sought then to seek to amend the amendments, but

the choice now before the House is to accept or reject the amendments. That is what we shall have to do at the end of this debate.

Mrs. Dunwoody: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The House is grateful for that clear statement of the position and, of course, we would not dream of arguing with your superior knowledge. However, the problem that we face is that on all Bills one of the first jobs of all hon. Members is to consider the title. As you know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the wording of the title is very precise for all Bills and is of considerable importance to the main section of the Bill. That is why any attempt to alter the title must inevitably have consequential effects not only upon the amendments on the Order Paper, but upon the Bill as it is debated. The hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) highlighted the fact that this problem has a direct effect, not just upon the wording, but——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Is the hon. Lady making a point of order to me or a speech?

Mrs. Dunwoody: I am concerned, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because I want to know from you whether, if we proceed to debate the amendments in the order in which they have been presented to the House, in effect we shall not only be taking a major decision, but reversing our decision by discussing the second amendment—in other words——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. If the hon. Lady feels that she should advise the House that the amendments would have a far reaching effect on the remainder of the Bill or on parts of the Bill, it is up to her to seek to deploy that argument and so persuade the House. The question whether the title should have been as it is printed or as it is proposed to amend it was the question before the House when, in its wisdom or otherwise, it decided to give the Bill a Second Reading, which it did. The House gave the Bill an unopposed Second Reading and the Bill has been dealt with by the House in Committee, and these matters could have been dealt with then. We now have an amendment on Third Reading. Nothing is out of order.

Mrs. Dunwoody: With respect, I was not in any way suggesting that it was technically out of order; I was simply saying that the problem has arisen because these are verbal amendments. If they had been printed amendments in the normal fashion and if the House had had the opportunity of recognising the real technical difficulty that is incorporated in the way in which the two amendments have been tabled, undoubtedly we should have——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. This is very similar to a point of order that was raised with Mr. Speaker at the outset of our proceedings when Mr. Speaker dealt with the question of admissibility or otherwise, and whether the procedure that we now have is reconcilable with our practice and with Standing Orders. Mr. Speaker has ruled on that. We should now get back to discussing the merits of the amendments. I call Mr. Ray Powell.

Mr. Powell: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We are discussing in detail and the amendments their effects. As you suggested, if the House feels that we should not accept either amendment, we should reject them.
However, could you advise me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on whether, if we reject them, we would have a vote in the House on rejecting them, and on whether, if the vote were


carried by just one vote, we would accept that and reject them all? Hon. Members who are not in the Chamber now to hear the debate because they are in their offices carrying out their parliamentary work, will have eight minutes from the time that you call a Division for us to explain the amendments to them. We have been here since 9.35 am discussing their merits and whether they should have been tabled in the first place. If we accept your advice and call a Division on this, how would we explain to 649 elected representatives what they were about to vote for? That is the dilemma that some of us face. We should look at this in far more depth and detail.

Mr. Skinner: I wonder whether we should have to wait for other hon. Members to come in to the House. Not many are here on a Friday because it is a bit of a dead day and many Tory MPs are in the law courts. Some of them were to have been demonstrating, but the Government have caved in, in contrast to the way in which they have behaved with the dockers. As there will not be many hon. Members here, we shall be able to approach them individually and, like shop stewards or Whips, we shall have to say something like, "There was a cock-eyed situation in Parliament this morning. An hon. Gentleman brought forward a Bill that had never been discussed before. It had been shoved in his hand by one of the Tory Whips. He was not too sure what it was about and not only had he got it all wrong, he had got the title wrong." That situation is relatively new in Parliament. Although this Government are capable of doing anything, it is a bit much that they have got the title wrong. After all, this is really a Government Bill——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Briefly, please.

Mr. Skinner: I am trying to explain this because it is an important issue. Indeed, it is an important issue for people in your area, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because it is all about smoke and pollution.
I suggest that we say, "The Government have brought in this measure but they do not know A from a bull's foot. We have tried to explain to the few colleagues who were in the Chamber what it was all about and they are aware of the circumstances. Although you might be in favour of the generality of the Bill, there is good reason to consider whether we should vote the matter down because the whole thing is technically absurd." A question arises on——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I wonder whether the hon. Member could contain himself until perhaps he catches my eye. Then he could make the speech that he is seeking to make now in an intervention. Interventions should be brief.

Mr. Skinner: The matter is important. This is not just any ordinary day. Mr. Speaker explained that it was very unusual. He went even further: he said that he did not like it. Then he left. Now you have got it. To be honest, I think you are in a predicament. Whereas normally Members of Parliament vote on the principle of a measure——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The predicament is the length of the hon. Gentleman's intervention. Perhaps he will save some of it up for when he catches my eye.

Mr. Stanbrook: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. There is a point of substance here. It is, with respect, one for resolution by the Chair. If we are being asked to say that a section of an Act should be repealed when in fact we are only amending it, what is to cure that obvious error at this stage?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman surprises me. The word "repeal", which is in the Bill as it stands, has already been approved by the House on Second Reading and it has not been challenged until now.

Mr. Stanbrook: On Second Reading, the wording was the other way round. We are being asked to change the order of the wording.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The Bill that is before the House was approved on Second Reading. It says that it is a Bill
To repeal section 16(1)(a) of the Clean Air Act 1956 and to amend section 1 of the Clean Air Act 1968.
The amendment that we are debating is to leave out the word "repeal" in the original Bill and to replace it with the word "amend." The word "repeal" was in the Bill that was before the House on Second Reading and it was approved by the House.

Mr. Donald Anderson: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am genuinely trying to be helpful. I have listened to what appears to be a substantial degree of confusion. My starting point is that legislation in haste and without adequate notice is often legislation for which later one has some cause for regret. I assume that there is no particular need for emergency legislation in this case. The current legislation has lasted a long time.
My question—a simple question of guidance—to you is this. Having come before the House with amendments that are of some significance, of which there has been little or no notice, would it be possible—out of courtesy to the House and to ensure that every hon. Member is able to examine and, if necessary, to take advice from whichever outside sources are relevant and that have an interest in the matter—for the promoter of the Bill——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was here at the beginning of our proceedings. Had he been here, he would recall that what he is saying now is similar to points of order that were raised with Mr. Speaker and that were dealt with by him. Mr. Speaker pointed out that, although what we are doing may be unusual and that he might regret it, none the less it was in order. The amendment has been selected as being in order. The hon. Gentleman has expressed an opinion. It may be an opinion that I share, but that is not a matter for me to decide. The opinion that the hon. Gentleman has expressed is one that the House must make its judgment on, not me.

Mr. Anderson: With respect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that is not the point that I am seeking to make. I am sure that your views, although very cogent for some of us on the substance of the Bill, are not relevant. The point is surely this: since Mr. Speaker made his ruling, events have moved on. The amount of debate shows that hon. Members feel some concern. The simple question is this: is it now technically possible, in the light of the debate that has taken place since Mr. Speaker gave his ruling, for the


promoter of the Bill, out of courtesy to the House—because, as you can see, this is, at the very least, a highly unusual issue and we have to be wary of creating precedents in this or any other matter—to say, "I will pull up stumps at this stage and seek to adjourn the debate and come back, after due notice, to the House?" Given the nature of the amendment, it may even be that due notice is seven days or 14 days, but——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman said that he was raising a point of order, but he is now making a long speech. I think that I can deal with the matter. Of course it will be open to the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) who moved the amendments to seek the leave of the House to withdraw them, but that would be a matter for the House, not for the Chair, to decide. Alternatively, if the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) is saying that, for whatever reason, hon. Members, both inside and outside the Chamber, have had insufficient time to consider the implications of the amendments, that is a matter for argument and debate. It may be an argument that the hon. Gentleman will seek to deploy later in an attempt to persuade the House that it should reject the amendments until further consideration can be given to their effect.

Mr. Anderson: I concede that perhaps I strayed into the realms of argument and that that is a matter that I can properly deploy in the Third Reading debate. May I ask a simple question? If, in the light of the debate, the mover of the amendments were to come to the conclusion that he should withdraw now and pull up stumps, or whatever the appropriate expression may be, would he be able to bring the Bill back to the House for further debate after due notice?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: No. We should then proceed to debate the Third Reading of the Bill, and it would be for the House to decide whether to give the Bill a Third Reading. We are all familiar with the fact that Bills that have been the subject of comment in the House but that have not necessarily, for whatever reason, at that point been amended, can be amended in another place, or their Lordships can be persuaded to consider amendments that may be tabled in another place.

Mr. Powell: I am becoming not only confused but bemused and aggravated. I am very worried. What worries me most of all is you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. When a point of order was raised by the hon. Member for Orpington, you had to consult the document to amend your ruling. That illustrates to me——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have not amended any ruling.

Mr. Powell: Then the observations that you were making on it. We have all had to do that this morning—even you, with your knowledge and expertise in the Chair. What we ought to be doing now is a very worrying problem. It is causing embarrassment to the sponsors of the Bill and those who are discussing it. Even Mr. Speaker this morning was not, I assume, eager to suggest that the amendment should be accepted on a verbal basis.
For the benefit of those hon. Members who have joined us since 9.30, you highlighted the fact that first word of the

Bill—"repeal"—is to be amended and that the word "amend" is to be inserted instead of the word "repeal". We have to consider the effect of the Bill as a result of the insertion of that one word. That is the reason for the dilemma. The whole thread and trend of my speech is now in shreds. I am having great difficulty in trying to pull all the threads together in dealing with the amendments.
I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) half an hour ago that I had not made up my mind whether I wanted the word "repeal" to be accepted or the word "amend." Now I am not sure whether either word should be accepted, or even whether we should be debating the matter any further. Perhaps we should reject the Bill altogether, and that creates another dilemma. As a Whip, I know that when hon. Members arrive at night directly from meetings, they ask, "In which corridor shall we go—left or right, Noes or Ayes?" and we have to advise them, as you know, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Skinner: A few weeks ago, when the title of the Bill was different, I would have advised hon. Members to go into one Lobby, but since a different Bill has been pesented to us this morning, a Bill that went through on the nod in a different fashion, I would advise the opposite. That shows the nature of the Bill. Within a few weeks, that Bill has not been amended but has been totally and utterly changed. That is the burden of my hon. Friend's argument.

Mr. Powell: What my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover has said is extremely important. Imagine the scene when you call a Division on the matter, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and hon. Members are herded into the corridors and say, "In which Lobby shall we vote?" As it is a private Member's Bill, there should be no Whip advising them. There is certainly no Whip on the Opposition Benches.
Hon. Members will come in, all confused and ask where to go, and be told, "You can vote Aye for a repeal, you can vote Aye for amendment, or you can go into the No Lobby." They will ask, "What are we doing in the No Lobby?", and be told, "We are voting on two verbal amendments that have been tabled this morning.".
That will all happen in the space of eight minutes, in which hon. Members have to get here from their offices which may be in Norman Shaw or Abbey gardens. They will run in with their shoes untied and their ties undone to get here in eight minutes to be confronted with a dilemma as to which way they should vote. Are we to send them into the Lobby to vote on one amendment or both amendments, and how will we explain to them the effect of that on the entire Bill which, in all probability they have not seen because it was hurriedly put through?

Mr. Anderson: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend's work as a Whip. As an hon. Member representing a Welsh constituency, I have never had any doubt as to which Lobby to choose. I have never needed to ask my hon. Friend for an explanation, I had only to look at him. I recall coming in from the bath, scantily clad. I did not ask my hon. Friend for advice, I simply looked at him. The advice he invariably gave me since I first entered the House as, "When in doubt, vote Labour." I have faithfully followed that advice. One never need ask for explanations from my hon. Friend, one just looks at his eyebrows, which have been eloquent enough.

Mr. Powell: My hon. Friend makes very kind remarks, but on this occasion, if a Division is called, my eyes will have to be cast to the floor because I would not be able to advise hon. Members by giving them directions with my eyes because I do not know whether they should be going into the Aye Lobby or the No Lobby.
I shall get on with my speech, but I do not feel that I can make the speech that I wanted to make about the amendments; I will have to wait for Third Reading because the remarks that I want to make may be interpreted as out of order. I represent a mining constituency. In 1979, it had seven collieries employing some 5,000 miners. The mining industry in Ogmore employed some 7,000 people in total. All the collieries were closed, so all the miners' homes which used to have smoke coming from their chimneys because of the allocation of free coal—although the free coal has stopped, tradition dies very hard in Wales, especially in my constituency and people still burn free coal—may be affected by the Bill as those people might be breaking the law if smoke is emitted from their chimneys.

Mr. Win Griffiths: My hon. Friend has probably received a number of representations about the problem of free coal. Because of the way in which British Coal is amending the scheme, it is becoming less likely that miners will convert their homes to gas or other completely smokeless fuels, but will continue to use their free coal allocation.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We are not debating that. We are debating whether a word should be deleted from the Bill and replaced by another word.

Mr. Powell: I appreciate what my hon. Friend says. It is very relevant to whether we replace the word "repeal" with the word "amend" in the title of the Bill as that will have a considerable effect on the Clean Air Act 1956, and section 1 of the Clean Air Act 1968. Those of us who have studied those Acts in depth and in detail because we are genuinely concerned about the environment—unlike the green goddess at No. 10—were concerned about the Clean Air Act long before 1979, and were affected by it even before the legislation was introduced in 1956 and 1968.
I illustrated that by describing my walk from Willesden to Acton at the tender age of 17 in all the fog and smog in London. I should be claiming from someone for the continual bouts of bronchitis I have suffered, not because I worked down the mines but because I have had a chest complaint ever since I was 17.

Mr. Eric Illsley: I should be happy to advise my hon. Friend about a claim for pneumoconiosis should he wish to claim some compensation for his chest complaint. I, too, am quite concerned about the Clean Air Act, as I also represent a mining constituency. If we vote against the amendments, we should be left with the Bill in its present form. Would that mean that section 16 of the Clean Air Act 1956 would be repealed, or would it remain in place within the Bill? Having listened to most of the debate, I am in something of a dilemma as to whether the Bill in its present form will repeal or amend section 16(1) of the Clean Air Act 1956.

Mr. Powell: That is the dilemma. I see that my hon. Friend is equipped with a book containing perhaps 1,000

pages of interpretation. He has obviously had time to study the matter. He may well be far more informed than some of us who have been participating in the debate since 9.35 this morning. Having read the documents perhaps he will be able to advise us.

Mr. Skinner: I am prepared to vote in order to produce that dilemma, because there is nothing wrong with the Opposition attempting to destabilise the Government. However, there is another way of attempting to find an answer to the problem. Unfortunately, that is difficult now. We could have consulted a barrister but they are on a go-slow—cacanny as they say in Scotland. There would be no point in approaching a run-of-the-mill solicitor because they have fallen out with the barristers. In fact, they will not sit with them on the Tory Benches. Therefore, there is a dilemma, and we should look at it from a layman and a laywoman's point of view.

Mr. Anderson: Layperson.

Mr. Skinner: Yes.
We should use our native gut instinct and vote the amendments down. The hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) could then read his Bill—he has not had a chance to read it because the Whips shoved it into his hand. They took it from the Government shelf. We could then have a fresh crack at it and support a measure which is environmentally and technically clean.

Mr. Powell: I accept the advice of my hon. Friend. Nevertheless, we should debate which way we should vote. With respect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, despite all the advice afforded us by both you and Mr. Speaker, we are still in a dilemma. If we were to stop the debate now and say that we will vote on the basis of the discussions we have had so far, we would not know which Lobby to enter. We would not know whether to insert the word "amend" or leave the word "repeal". I return to the same argument I put to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover, the repeal of section 16(1) of the 1956 Act would be rather strong.

Mrs. Dunwoody: It is sweeping.

Mr. Powell: Yes, it is sweeping. I do not think that the environmentalists who have turned up to debate the matter would be eager to see that. Therefore, we are in a dilemma as to whether "amend" is the right word. We are facing great difficulties even on advising people on amendment No. 1. The difficulties have resulted from the way in which the amendments were thrown at us at 9 o'clock this morning.

Mr. Anderson: rose

Mr. Powell: I want to get on with my speech. I have been delayed by interventions and I have a speech to deliver on this important issue. If we can resolve the dilemma, I could ensure that my speech is recorded.

Mr. Anderson: The most important point mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) is the way in which the amendments have been thrown at us. I am trying to think of a compromise——

Mr. Skinner: I hate that word.

Mr. Anderson: I shall try to think of another word to satisfy my hon. Friend. Perhaps "middle way"?

Mr. Skinner: Solution.

Mr. Anderson: I am trying to think of a solution which might satisfy both sides of the House. Since the Bill improves the environment, albeit in a limited way, it would be wrong to block it.
If the Bill were to be withdrawn now and within a reasonable time there were to be adequate environmental and technical explanations of the need for it, on its reintroduction would my hon. Friend give the Bill a fair wind so that it can be enacted by the end of the Session? Would that not be a fair way of meeting both sides in this matter?

Mr. Powell: I accept my hon. Friend's point. If the amendments were to be withdrawn, we could get on with the debate on the Bill itself.
As an environmentalist, I am concerned about pollution. However, there is another Bill on the Order paper for which I prepared a speech—the Sunday Trading (Reform) Bill. I had hoped that we would have reached that by now, because I stayed up late last night preparing for it. I am also interested in the Weights and Measures (Amendment) Bill, but, because of these amendments, we have been thrown into a dilemma and have been delayed for an hour and a half. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover said, we may have been able to call on the other place for advice. However, as a result of the Government's attitude and policies to the health workers, railway workers, transport workers and now the judges and the Law Lords, everybody is in dispute. The country is in turmoil, and on arriving here at 9·30 on a Friday morning to discuss the control of smoke pollution, we find that the House is in turmoil.

Mr. Win Griffiths: My hon. Friend has mentioned the turmoil being caused by the Government. He omitted to mention that the proposals for the National Health Service are causing turmoil in the medical profession. My hon. Friend also mentioned the severe chest problems from which he suffers as a result of pollution. Therefore, there are far more substantive issues with which we should deal, but we cannot do so because of the way in which the Bill has been presented to us and the mistakes that have been made.

Mr. Powell: My hon. Friend has raised an important point. If we can prevent smoke being ejected from industrial and domestic units, it would clean the air and should stop some of the health problems with which we are faced now and the expense of curing them. We should be looking at that closely.
I was considering this matter last night and was in a dilemma as to whether I should seek to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to speak on this Bill or whether I should wait for the Sunday Trading (Reform) Bill. I am sponsored by the union representing shopworkers and therefore, I have an interest in that Bill.
Hon. Members have sought your advice, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on what to do with the amendments. We have received certain legal advice from the hon. Member for Orpington, but we are still in a dilemma. We shall not make progress unless the hon. Member for Basingstoke withdraws the amendments; until he does so, the matter will not be resolved. Hon. Members have said, in points of order and interventions, that that is the only way out.
11 am
My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) mentioned health hazards caused by smoke pollution, which affect us all. I look forward this afternoon to driving down the M4 or catching a train from Paddington to the fresh air and beauty of Wales. In Wales, I do not have to wear an oxygen mask, which some hon. Members use in London. There is a particular need for smoke control in cities. Hon. Members are concerned about pollution, and had the amendments not been thrown at us this morning we would probably have made short speeches in support of the Bill, which we believe could be effective and helpful to people. I want more smokeless zones and less smoke emitted into the atmosphere.
We should be debating smoke emitted not only by domestic homes or industrial units but by farmers burning stubble, where black smoke is emitted and——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. This has nothing to do with the amendments.

Mr. Powell: I am loth to question your ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but the title of the Bill is
To repeal section 16(1)(a) of the Clean Air Act 1956 and to amend section 1 of the Clean Air Act 1968.
We are debating smoke emission from chimneys, industrial units and other places. I am questioning whether we should repeal or amend——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I thought that the hon. Gentleman was talking about smoke emission from farmers burning stubble.

Mr. Powell: I was talking about the extension of the offence of emitting dark smoke from industrial or trade premises. Some farm units are industrial units. I have been on trains when dark smoke has blocked the entire railway track. Indeed, I have travelled on the M4 when the same has happened as a result of industrial waste being burnt on farms.

Mr. Anderson: My hon. Friend has mentioned one of the most important sources of dark smoke. If I am fortunate enough to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on Third Reading, I should like to deal with the definition of dark smoke. Some major polluters have been omitted from the Bill, and my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) should consider whether there is anything sinister in that. Has there been a conspiracy to omit from the Bill major polluters and to deal only with——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman cannot debate these matters on the amendments.

Mr. Powell: My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) is right. The Bill should define black or white smoke.
When one travels on the train to Didcot, one sees electricity power stations that have large chimneys. When white smoke is being emitted, it does not look too bad, but sometimes they emit black smoke. The difficulty is how to define black or grey smoke. Who will define it? Are there sufficient inspectors to ensure that offences are not committed? I have a 40-page document——

Mrs. Dunwoody: Read it out.

Mr. Powell: I shall not read it all. It is produced by Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution and clearly shows a


reduction in the number of inspectors. I do not want to aggravate matters because I can see you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, shuffling in your chair.

Mr. Harry Greenway: The hon. Gentleman has touched on the difference between black and white smoke, which is fundamental to the Bill. The wide-ranging effects of the amendments encompass——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. There is nothing in the amendments that varies the colour of the smoke that should be subject to the legislation.

Mr. Greenway: May I make my point? I was——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have heard sufficient of the hon. Gentleman's point to understand it.

Mr. Greenway: But, Mr. Deputy Speaker——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I call the hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell).

Mr. Greenway: I am not——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. If the hon. Gentleman wants to persuade the House of his argument he should try to catch my eye in the usual way instead of persisting with an intervention that I have said is not compatible with the rules of order.

Mr. Powell: The way in which the amendments have been moved this morning has aggravated hon. Members. We are all on tenterhooks because we do not know whether we are in order. We must therefore be guided by you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I should like to get on and deal with the Sunday Trading (Reform) Bill.

Mr. Win Griffiths: Before the intervention of the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway), my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) made an important point. If we pass the amendments, the Bill will become different. There is also the issue of the inspectorate. What is the point of passing the Bill in its amended form if we do not have the inspectors to ensure that the Bill is carried out? Even if the Bill is passed unamended, we shall need more inspectors. If the amendments are carried, there is an argument about whether we need more or fewer inspectors. My hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) should give us some facts and figures about the inspectorate, so that we can determine the best way to proceed.

Mr. Powell: The penultimate paragraph of the explanatory memorandum says:
The Bill has no financial effects or effects on public service manpower.
I have read and re-read the Bill and it is obvious that there must be more inspectors to draw to the attention of the people concerned the extension of the offence of emitting dark smoke from industrial and trade premises. In such circumstances, I assume that the people involved would be prosecuted. My hon. Friend has made a relevant point. If we do not have more inspectors, the inspectorate will not be able to carry out its obligations under the Clean Air Act 1968.

Mr. Bob Cryer: Would my hon. Friend care to speculate on the desirability of repealing section 16(1)(a) of the Clean Air Act 1956? If it was repealed rather than amended, we could produce

amendments to incorporate the Ringelman scale which, as my hon. Friend knows, is the scale used to test whether an offence has been committed when smoke is emitted from steam locomotives. As my hon. Friend knows, I have some considerable experience in these matters. I hope that my hon Friend will dwell for a little while on the argument about whether repeal would be better. I have the Clean Air Act 1956 in front of me; section 16 provides no definition of black, white or grey smoke. Some adequate definition should be inserted.

Mr. Powell: I am glad that my hon. Friend is here to give us that advice. If he had been here earlier, he might have been able to resolve our one-and-a-half-hour discussion. We could have listened to his advice and we could then have talked about amendment or repeal. He has convinced me that we were not clear about which it should be.
I have had some experience of British Rail. I talked before about walking to Old Oak common railway depot in London, which serviced most of the western region of British Rail. Some hon. Members have said that I have always pushed a pen, but in fact I used to use a 2 ft shovel on British Rail to shovel coal into an engine from a tender which had a 28-ft firebox. The smoke that used to come out was black when we were at Paddington, but it would be white on the way down to Penzance and Plymouth. If we were to repeal section 16, we could table many amendments to provide a definition. That would please you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because we would then clearly be in order in having a full debate on a proper definition of grey smoke, black smoke and white smoke.

Mr. Anderson: I want to bring my hon. Friend back to the amendments, which will please you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. He has done well to keep within their constraints. He pointed out that it is rather implausible to believe that the Bill will have no financial effects on public service manpower. That bald and implausible statement related to the Bill in its original form. We have not heard from the Government or any other source whether the amendments will, in themselves, have repercussions on the need for public service manpower.
If the Bill is a coherent whole, to alter one part may lead to the alteration of other parts, so the whole exercise this morning is misconceived. I ask my hon. Friend to consider the point about the implausibility of there being no financial effects on public service manpower and also the possible differences of amendment or appeal on the need for public service manpower.

Mr. Powell: That is a relevant point because, as I quoted earlier, the Bill suggests that there will he no financial effects on public service manpower.

Mr. Anderson: That is nonsense.

Mr. Powell: I agree that that is nonsense.

Ms. Walley: I feel that somehow or other the House will have to find a solution to our present predicament. There is the question how, if there were to be a Division, we would explain to those Members who are either away from the Chamber or who have not taken part in the debate how they should vote on the two amendments. We have no way of knowing how the amendments will change the details of the Bill and we do not know the implications for


manpower—or personpower, I should say. We have just had a sanitised annual report from the inspectorate of pollution—and I hoped to refer to it on Third Reading —which gives details of the way in which the inspectorate is under-resourced, demoralised and unable to carry out its work on air pollution.
We are in a dilemma. How are we to tell other hon. Members what is happening? How will the general public know what is happening when they hear our arguments on "Today in Parliament"? Our confusion and dilemma are indicative of the Government's confusion on environmental issues. For that reason, I urge Opposition Members to do all that they can to establish a proper environmental protection agency—which a Labour Government will do—and I urge the Minister or the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) to come forward with specific proposals.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. This is supposed to be an intervention.

Mr. Powell: My right hon. Friend—I should have said my hon. Friend, but she will be my right hon. Friend before long—has made a timely intervention, which is a request for some help from the Government to resolve our dilemma, if it is possible to obtain help from the Government when the House is placed in a dilemma on private Members' Bills. It was not only an intervention but a plea made in the hope that——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The Minister is seeking to catch my eye. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman might consider bringing his remarks to a conclusion so that the Minister can do as he asks.

Mr. Cryer: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I hope that there is no preferential treatment for Ministers. This is essentially a day for Back Benchers and I should not like to see any preference given to a Minister, as often happens.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) was expressing the hope that the Minister would give the House some guidance. In case the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) had not noticed, I was merely pointing out that the Minister was seeking to do exactly what the hon. Member for Ogmore wanted. Whether he terminates his speech to allow the Minister to intervene is a matter for him and the Chair.

Mr. Powell: I am glad that you said that, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Since I started my speech on the amendments, I have been trying to get the Minister to intervene. I do not wish to delay the House any longer. I hope that I will catch your eye later, Mr. Deputy Speaker, after the Minister has spoken so that I can give my speech on Third Reading.

Mr. Alan Meale: I thank my hon. Friend for clarifying matters. He mentioned the report by Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution. Perhaps he will comment on the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms. Walley) and show that it is pointless for legislation of this kind to proceed while the Government are in such a mess over the air division. During the recent debate on the Consolidated Fund, the Minister admitted that there was disarray and that the chief inspector of air pollution and other senior

inspectors had resigned. Reorganisation is proceeding in the air division and there is absolute turmoil. Perhaps my hon. Friend will refer in detail to the document which he mentioned earlier, thereby enlightening the House as to what needs to be done.

Mr. Powell: I notice that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms. Walley) has a copy of the report by Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution, about which I could go into some detail. On reading the report last night I found that one senior inspector had resigned. Mr. Brian Ponsford was responsible for the report's preparation. Its implications for the Bill will be profound. Scales of promotion, remuneration and qualifications have been reported upon and a number of qualified inspectors will no longer enjoy their former conditions of service. I do not understand how they can monitor what is happening at present, let alone in future, if their work load is increased.

Ms. Walley: In view of the issue as to how smoke control can be monitored, I am happy to have an opportunity to show the crisis that exists within HMIP. On air pollution legislation, the sanitised version of the first annual report says:
Inspectors made 9,134 visits to or in connection with scheduled works in 1987–88 (8,723 in 1987) compared with 9,391 in 1986.
It is plain that there has been a substantial decline in the number of inspections. The report continues:
This is in line with the targeted figure of 9,000. In several districts shortage of Inspectors or the need for introductory training for new Inspectors meant that some works did not receive a visit during the year.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Briefly.

Ms. Walley: I shall be brief, Sir. Even more important, an unsanitised version of the report, in which I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) will be interested, states——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Interventions should be brief and relevant.

Mr. Powell: My hon. Friend's points were relevant, as is the unsanitised version, which she has passed to me, because it covers the whole inspectorate. I read that document last night because I thought that I might be lucky enough to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to speak not on the amendments but on the Bill in general. The document refers to the reorganisation of HMIP and new legislation which will increase the inspectors' workload. It states:
The proposed reorganisation provides only six middle management field posts to do the work which at present is being performed by sixteen people; comparison with Scotland where there has been a staff inspection within the last two years shows that, even without the additional work resulting from the new legislation, eighteen middle management posts would be realistic.
That was only the second paragraph. The third states:
The long term objective of having all inspectors working from three Regional offices in Industry Groups would result in inefficiency from excess travelling and give less inspection at a given cost, at the same time there would be less liaison with Local Authorities and a lack of the local knowledge which exists at present.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mrs. Virginia Bottomley): I am reluctant to intervene. I have listened with great care to the hon.


Gentleman for the past hour and three quarters. It may help him to move towards the conclusion of his important remarks if I clarify the point that the Bill has no effects for HMIP; it would be environmental health officers who would be involved. I hope that that helps the hon. Gentleman to move to a conclusion so that I have the opportunity later to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Anderson: I should like——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. There should be no interventions in interventions.

Mr. Powell: Yes——

Mr. Anderson: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Powell: I give way.

Mr. Anderson: I should like to follow that point. Although there is a crisis in the national inspectorate, the amendments relate specifically to domestic smoke and domestic pollution. As the Under-Secretary of State has properly said, the people who, without any additional manpower or expenditure, will be reluctant in this context, are not the members of the hard-pressed national inspectorate but the environmental health officers at local government level. My hon. Friend has had extensive experience of local government and is more aware than all of us of the crisis among environmental health officers at local government level. We hope that the proposals will have no effects on manpower, yet the environmental health officers, who already have additional burdens placed on them by other Government measures—that is right—will be expected to do the work without additional remuneration.

Mr. Powell: I accept my hon. Friend's important point. If we were considering the third Bill on the Order Paper, the Sunday Trading (Reform) Bill, we would be considering a similar problem for environmental health officers—how to monitor if there were Sunday opening of shops. It is ridiculous to imply that extra staff will not be needed. We reject that idea.

Ms. Walley: I feel obliged to return to what the Under-Secretary of State said—that this matter has nothing to do with HMIP but is for environmental health officers at local level. For the Minister's information, I recently tabled a series of parliamentary questions asking about the cuts in training which are causing a national shortage of environmental health officers. The Minister is nodding because, no doubt she remembers those questions. It is clear that we have a national shortage of environmental health officers throughout the country and that this problem is exacerbated by the cuts being implemented by the Department of the Environment.
I also asked a series of questions of the Institution of Environmental Health Officers so that it could show me where there is a shortfall between the numbers of posts it has on the establishment and the number which it has employed to carry out this vital work. In many cases there is as much as a 30 per cent. shortage.
Not two miles from this place, in the London borough of Lambeth, there is a shortage of environmental health officers. How on earth will it be possible for each and every local authority throughout the country to take on board the implications of the Bill, which we do not even understand because of the way in which verbal

amendments have been brought to the House this morning? That is beyond my comprehension and, I repeat, is indicative of the Government's misunderstanding of the environmental issue and the crisis facing the country today.

Mr. Powell: I have been interested to see in the House over the past few years the knowledge and extreme capability within the Opposition, particularly on our Front Bench. The short intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms. Walley) shows the House and the country the knowledgeable people we have in the Opposition—especially the women. I am grateful for that intervention and for the knowledge that my hon. Friend expounded to the Minister.
I shall not excite your wrath further, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because I desperately need to powder my nose. Therefore, I shall give way so that the Minister may catch your eye and speak on the amendments. I hope that you will be kind enough to allow me to speak later on Third Reading.

Mrs. Virginia Bottomley: It is no doubt right that the House should have debated these amendments at such length. We all appreciate the possible sacrifice which has been made by the hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) if it proves to be impossible for him to catch your eye later, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to discuss a subject which is obviously of great concern to him.
This is an unusual way to deal with amendments, and there is no doubt that it is right that the House should give proper scrutiny to these procedures. I was not going to address the substance of the Bill in these brief remarks—hoping that I might be able to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if we moved to Third Reading.
The Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) has the support not only of my Department but, on the basis of consultation held over some time, of virtually all the local authorities from which hon. Members present come, even if they do not all represent them. The Bill has a wide measure of support and there is no doubt, from this morning's debate on these amendments, that there is much interest in the subject. There is also some misunderstanding about the terms of the Bill. No doubt my hon. Friend, if his Bill reaches Third Reading, will explain precisely what his measures involve.
It is a source of great regret that, frankly, an error was made in the long title of the Bill. The amendments merely change the long title and do not change the substance of the Bill or its effects on section 16(1)(a) of the 1956 Act.

Mrs. Dunwoody: Is the Minister seriously suggesting that a Bill with a major defect in its title has been brought before the House in a suitable form? Is it not true that any legislation put before the House—particularly such as this, which was rushed through on Friday with no debate—should be perfect and not warrant criticism of its wording? How could highly paid parliamentary draftsmen make such elementary mistakes?

Mrs. Bottomley: It is a source of considerable regret that this error occurred in the long title. However, it does not in any way change the content of clause 1. As it stands, there is a conflict between the substance of the long title and clause 1.

Mr. Anderson: rose——

Mrs. Bottomley: I shall finish answering the point made by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), who talked about the way in which my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke secured the earlier stages of the Bill, which was unusual. There is a general understanding that there will be an opportunity for full debate to discuss the detail of this important measure on Third Reading. If the House decides that the Bill should be given a Third Reading, it will be possible to give this important measure the full scrutiny it requires.

Mr. Anderson: The House is always charitable and understanding when a Minister or any hon. Member says that a fault or error has occurred, as on this occasion. I do not wish to carry out a witch hunt, but it would be helpful to know whether this was merely a technical error by a draftsman or whether the fault lies with the Department, so that we may better understand the source of the error. Who committed the error?

Mrs. Bottomley: I cannot reply to that specific point. I hope that the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson), if he studies the Bill, will appreciate that its substance is entirely unchanged.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: I wish to make it abundantly clear that the House would be remiss to allow this legislation to go through without a vote. If the amendments were accepted, some people would argue that the Bill was not a bad measure, despite the fact that there is no allocation for manpower, which means that this would have to come from somewhere else. Staff would have to be taken off other jobs to look after those affected by the Bill.
It is pretty clear that a few weeks ago the Government decided to get a small Bill on the statute book that could be described as green. The Prime Minister has made various speeches up and down the country and it was obviously decided to use Parliament and a private Members' day to pass a so-called green Bill. Little or no attention was paid to the content of the Bill—merely that it should be passed.
Therefore, several Fridays ago, a Bill was taken off the shelf—it was not looked at properly, and was handed to a Back Bencher. It has reached Third Reading, and it is disgraceful that, having reached this stage, the Bill's proposer, in cahoots with the Government, had to table Third Reading verbal amendments to clean up the Bill. There is no question but that such proceedings should be totally refuted by hon. Members.

Mr. Anderson: In answering the question about whether the Bill's origin was in the Department of the Environment or with a private Member, are we not finding an answer to my question about who was at fault? If this were really a Bill conceived by a private Member, we would understand the error because we are not experts. However, the Bill was taken from the dusty shelves of the Department of the Environment, and the Minister should say, "I am at fault—please understand it is me." Is this a private Member's Bill or a Bill from the Department of the Environment?

Mr. Skinner: I have no doubt, and perhaps the indications given by the proposer of the Bill suggest, that my hon. Friend is correct. The proposer of the Bill said

very little when he moved the amendments. In all the confusion, he threw no light at all on the matter. It is not the first time that that has happened. It happens quite often when Governments go to Back Benchers and say, "Do you want your name in the history books? Here is a chance. You can get this Bill through on a Friday. It is an innocuous measure and will not cause any trouble. Most Opposition Members will support it." If the Bill had been put in the proper form, that would have been the case.
The Government are now totally confused and are taking on the doctors, the Health Service, lawyers, dockers, almost every group of people in the country—and Parliament. The Prime Minister and her junior Ministers and others were not sure of what was taking place. They think that on a Friday not many people will be here and that they can get the Bill through because there will be no Opposition Members to examine it. My hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) has done a good job this morning. After a long argument not only with the Government but with the authorities, including the Chair, we, and especially my hon. Friend, have been able to establish that this procedure should be stopped.

Mr. Cryer: Has my hon. Friend noted that there are no members of the Liberal, SDP or other cauliflower parties here exercising the parliamentary scrutiny that they often claim is their priority right? Does he agree that one of the reasons for the procedures of the House being abused on a Friday by this seedy little conspiracy, which tries to get some sort of "green" Bill through, is that the Government are stuffing Parliament to its gills with legislation, such as the Water Bill, which will reduce anti-pollution standards? That means that they have no time to allow proper consideration for minor legislation such as this Bill. If they had any decency, they would withdraw some of the nasty big Bills and give proper time to small Bills such as this.

Mr. Skinner: That would not be a bad idea. It could be quite properly argued that the Government have caused all this confusion and heaped it on one of their Back Benchers. I do not regard him as the guilty party. There is a good argument for saying that the Bill should proceed on Monday and that the Bill for the repeal of the dock labour scheme should be dropped. That is another Bill that has been devised in haste. Perhaps the dockers should receive the same treatment as the lawyers and judges. When they threaten action at the Royal Courts of Justice, the Government run a mile and say, "We shall have to find a way out for them."
It is correct for us to make a stand on this issue. It is clear that the House has been abused in a way that I have not witnessed in all the time that I have been here. The last time that a Bill was verbally amended on Third Reading was 18 years ago. According to the authorities of the House, that was a minor correction. These amendments seek to change the title of the Bill. The Bill brought before the House several Fridays ago was quite different from this one. It was not different in style or in a few words. The title was different.
11.45 am
The Bill that had its Second Reading and went through its Committee and Report stages was not this Bill. It was a Bill to repeal a section of the Clean Air Act 1956, whereas the Bill before the House today seeks to amend


the Act to improve it. There is a mile of difference between a Bill that will repeal sections of an Act and one that seeks to amend Acts to make them better.
What would happen if I went to the Chair on Monday and said, "By the way, I have a verbal amendment that was not printed in Friday's Order Paper. I want to change the nature of Monday's debate about the dock labour scheme. Instead of repealing the scheme I want to amend it." Perhaps we should try that and seek to extend the scheme to the non-scheme ports. I wonder whether the Chair would accept that. Perhaps on Monday I can say, "Here I am, Mr. Speaker, with a couple of minor amendments. They change the title of the Dock Work Bill but they change only one word."

Mr. Anderson: Would that not have the additional benefit of avoiding strife in the ports? The dockers' leaders have made clear——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman cannot raise that matter while we are debating the amendment.

Mr. Skinner: It may not be in order to speak about that, but if I am to convince some of my hon. Friends to make a stand on this issue I have to draw analogies between what is happening today and what could happen on other days. To all intents and purposes, this is a Government-sponsored Bill on a private Members' day and that is an abuse of the procedures of the House. The Opposition came to that conclusion in the early part of the morning. We came here to talk about something else and suddenly discovered that the Bill placed before us was totally at variance with the one that had gone through three or four Fridays ago.

Mr. Harry Cohen: My hon. Friend has spoken about verbal amendments and their dangers. He has also spoken about how the procedure might be used on Monday for the Dock Work Bill. If the precedent is set here——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We are not talking about the docks. We had better leave that until Monday and stick to Friday's business.

Mr. Cohen: Perhaps we could table a verbal amendment to this Bill to say that the Employment Bill which shackles trade unions that might have an interest in smoke pollution should not apply. Perhaps that could be a precedent for the Dock Work Bill.

Mr. Skinner: I agree with my hon. Friend. I know that Mr. Deputy Speaker is a bit concerned. I know that he has been placed in a serious dilemma this morning. I was here at 9.30 and saw him come in. I saw him shaking his head and I know why. He follows the constitution perhaps more keenly than some others. It looked to me as if the Speaker was saying, "They have got me in a fine mess this morning."
My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) and I thought that we had come to debate a tiny straightforward Bill on smoke control, but discovered that it was completely different. Unusually, Mr. Speaker had to make a statement saying that this was almost a precedent. It has not happened for 18 years. He clearly seemed to have a problem. He said that he deprecated the use of this procedure. In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich and I,

he also said that he understood why my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore might have to argue on a wider basis than on the narrow terms of the amendment. It is fairly easy to understand why that is so. If someone went to the Vote Office a few days ago and thought that the Bill there was the one going through and then found that it was not, it is clear that he would have a problem.
If on Second Reading, in Committee and on Report the promoter of the Bill had aroused a discussion and there had been a debate about the previous Bill, hon. Members and the Speaker could have argued for a narrow debate today. However, not a word has been spoken on the alternative Bill and it is obvious that the Speaker and the authorities realised that they had played a blinder.
Therefore, we must now seriously consider whether we can—I am speaking now to Opposition Members and any Conservative Members who are interested in the constitution and the House—support the amendments, albeit that the Bill in its entirety might be fine when produced properly. Should we allow, for purely constitutional purposes, the amendments to go through? Would it not be right and proper for somebody to make a stand and divide on the amendment so that we can demonstrate to those outside the House that we did not allow the Government-sponsored chicanery to pass without making a stand?

Mr. Cohen: I am still concerned, because, as my hon. Friend has rightly said, the Bill went through Second Reading and Committee without any word being spoken about it. That was presumably because, without the amendments, the House accepted that it was a good Bill. However, the amendments fundamentally alter the Bill, because, for example, section 16(1)(a) of the Clean Air Act 1956 exempted chimneys that produced smoke that was deemed to be a statutory nuisance. Under the unamended Bill owners of chimneys creating a nuisance would no longer be able to get away with it, but because of the words "to amend" they can continue to create a nuisance. The problem is that there has not been a statement about that during the debate and no one has explained why they should be allowed to continue to create a nuisance. Does my hon. Friend consider that that is a serious point?

Mr. Skinner: It is a serious point, because when the Bill was presented it was not debated, and when it was brought here today it was not explained. Now the Minister has been on her feet and, because she wants to be careful about her rising up the greasy pole on the ministerial Bench, she would not commit herself completely on the issue. Why? The watchword is: "When confusion reigns, keep your trap shut." That is why the hon. Lady did not explain—this is what my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) tried to explain—the difference between "amend" and "repeal". Because Opposition Members are concerned about the constitution, we want to know what the words would have meant and what they now mean in their new context.

Mr. Anderson: Is not another possible explanation for the Minister's reticence and surprising brevity that, if she had spoken longer, she might have revealed all? She would have revealed the fact that the Bill is in fact a Department of the Environment Bill and not a private Member's Bill. She was keen not to go beyond the strict confines of her brief so as to avoid revealing the Bill's true origin.

Mr. Skinner: I do not doubt that. Just imagine her going to see the Secretary of State for the Environment and saying, "I have had a tidy time in there today and I am afraid that I made a slight error." He says to her, "I have not been around. I have been in my own back yard. I am not sure what has been happening this week. I have been dealing with planning matters in the north and in Gloucestershire. I have been trying to ward off all those people who want to invade my privacy, even though I shall vote against those Bills next Friday." She then says, "I am afraid I went too far. We had a Bill off the Government shelf that dealt with the environment which we thought would please the Prime Minister who has this new green image." As I said earlier, some people in my area said it was a mouldy image, but that is another story. She says to the Secretary of State, "What happened was that we brought forward a Bill that was upside down and, rather than explain it to the House, I thought that I had better keep my mouth shut."

Mrs. Dunwoody: rose——

Mr. Skinner: I think that my hon. Friend wants to embroider that point.

Mrs. Dunwoody: Does not my hon. Friend understand that what happened was much simpler than that? The Minister is the only woman in the Department; she is intelligent and she knows what she is doing. They have mucked the Bill up, and the Government have given it to her to straighten out.

Mr. Skinner: My hon. Friend used to be in a Government Department and I am prepared to accept what she has said. It is just conceivable that she has taken one off the shelf before.

Mrs. Dunwoody: No, I have not.

Mr. Skinner: It is just a possibility. My hon. Friend, however, knows the way in which the machinery works. There is no doubt in my mind—it has been confirmed now—that the Government are behind all the confusion. I think that we must lay it at their door.

Mr. Cohen: On the question of drafting, does my hon. Friend agree that the reason why the Minister has this horrible job this morning is that the Department of the Environment realises that it has made a great mess of it and it has given the woman the worst job, as is always the case in this life? Does my hon. Friend agree that perhaps the Secretary of State for the Environment had a role in this matter, because, after all, he was responsible for the Housing Bill? The Secretary of State is reported to have said, when that Bill was before the House, that he thought that it was a wonderful Bill because he had drafted it himself. However, because it was such a mess, it had 400 to 500 amendments made to it before it passed through Committee. Could it be that he had a hand in drafting the Bill?

Mr. Skinner: There are many ways of looking at it, but I think that there are two main ones. The Bill was drafted with him hanging over it and the fag ash dropped on the wording. That is how we got the wrong wording. It was obliterated by the fag ash. The other alternative was that he was out one day in the park picking up litter. The Prime Minister was at his side and he had a bag. They were putting litter into the bag in St. James's park and, as he

was rummaging through the bag, because his fag had dropped into it, he pulled out a bit of paper—it was the Bill. That is where it came from. I tend to think that it was probably the first proposition. However, despite all the hilarity that might be caused, a Government-sponsored Bill was presented to the House calling upon us to repeal the Clean Air Act, but, when we came here today we were told, "We did not mean that; we only wanted to amend it."
I have been discussing this matter with some of my hon. Friends, and we believe that it would be worthwhile considering voting against the amendments. That would not be on the basis of whether they are good or bad, but it would be a way in which we could register our disapproval at the way in which the Bill has been dealt with. If we do not do that, the history books will record that we took part in it and, in all the confusion that reigned, it will be recorded that we connived and allowed the Bill to go through when we all know that it would be better if the Bill were presented in its proper form on another day.
I believe that no one who has spoken or intervened would not give a fair wind to the general idea that is contained within the Bill if it came back to us properly drawn up, either next Friday or the Friday after. There are several more weeks to go before the end of this Session. It would still have time to go through its procedures—in the sleepy den in the other place—that is if it can get rid of the football passes Bill—and then become law. If we allow the Bill to go through without registering disapproval of the amendments, we shall have been a party to the same kind of connivance into which the Government have entered with the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter).

12 noon

Mr. Cryer: Does my hon. Friend agree that Parliament ought not to have double standards—one for the Government and one for Back Benchers? If we accept this precedent without objecting or voting, should we not try the same trick on Monday? The Government's standard would surely not apply to Opposition Back Benchers. If we wanted to amend the Dock Work Bill on Monday, we would not be allowed to table amendments then. If there is to be consistency, right hon. and hon. Members should reject the Government's shabby manoeuvre.

Mr. Anderson: My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) puts his finger on an important point. If, contrary to our inclinations, we give way and are not true to our role, perhaps the Government will give way on Monday and accept a similar amendment not to repeal but to amend the Dock Work Bill.

Mr. Skinner: From time to time I have been involved in negotiations with others in the House, but it is a bit of a tall order to ask me to make it my job between now and Monday to negotiate with the Government about repealing the dock labour scheme. On Monday, it will be our job to attempt that through the Authority of the Chair. The Chair should be warned that some right hon. and hon. Members may try that procedure.
It is not a bad idea to alert those of my hon. Friends who are sponsored by the Transport and General Workers Union, and who are more closely allied with the issue, of what happened today and that a new system has developed. They should be informed that, contrary to the


practice of the past 18 years, one can now change the title of a Bill, and that instead of repealing legislation, one can amend it. We should alert our colleagues.

Mr. Anderson: And raise points of order.

Mr. Skinner: There is no question that we should raise points of order. We shall call upon the Chair to accept amendments to the Dock Work Bill when it is debated on Monday. If we did that, the Bill could be modified to include all non-scheme ports, which would ensure that everyone enjoyed the same conditions of work in ports throughout Britain. As there has been no industrial trouble at the ports over many years, the chances are that there would be relative—I say relative—industrial peace throughout the industry. In that way, we would serve a very useful purpose.
The more that I think about it, the more I am convinced that this change of procedure can provide us with great opportunities in future. I am beginning to think about all the Bills that are to come before the House, and in particular-——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Sufficient has been said about docks. Right hon. and hon. Members should concentrate on the amendments before the House.

Mr. Skinner: When considering whether I agree to repeal or amend a Bill, I can only do so on the basis of whether that is right for the Bill before the House and whether it is correct parliamentary practice. I cannot look at it in any other way. I must ask myself, "Is it right for those acting on behalf of the Government to take such action?" We all know that the Government are behind the Bill, otherwise they would have denied it. In the new parliamentary straits in which we find ourselves, it is right to consider whether this new procedure would be appropriately adopted not only on Monday but on many other occasions.
Shortly we may have before us what is known as the other private Member's Bill procedure. I want to know whether under that Bill it will be possible, once the Bill has passed through all its other stages, to amend or repeal the Associated British Ports (No. 2) Bill and the Associated British Ports (Hull) Bill. Mr. Deputy Speaker knows something about that subject because he comes under the general auspices of Chairman of Ways and Means. Perhaps he can give an answer off the top of his head. However, in view of what happened this morning, he may have to study the books. I shall not develop that point but will throw it in as a sprat to catch a mackerel on another day.

Mr. Cohen: Could not the same procedure be used for the Dock Work Bill as is being used today? Instead of repealing the dock labour scheme, it could be amended by enhancing trade union rights and increasing pay.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The House must wait until next week to do that. We cannot debate next week's business today.

Mr. Skinner: My hon. Friend is getting pretty excited at the prospect that I hold out. Those right hon. and hon. Members who have served the House for the past 18 years have never seen such a procedure used before. Some of us study "Erskine May" but obviously we have missed some bits. However, I have since discovered that on the last occasion that the procedure was used it involved a

non-controversial measure and did not involve totally changing that Bill. The last time that the verbal amendment procedure was used the measure concerned was, by comparason with the Bill before the House, of a comparatively minor nature. However, the amendments now before the House would turn the Bill upside down. A wide procedural gate has been opened, and those of us who take account of parliamentary procedures will exploit it in future.

Ms. Joyce Quin: My hon. Friend refers to the problems of dealing with a private Member's Bill that is basically a Government Bill in disguise. Shortly we shall be debating a similar private Member's Bill concerning weights and measures that also appears to be a Government Bill in disguise. When we come to consider the amendments to that Bill, can we be sure——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The House cannot debate now a Bill that appears later on the Order Paper.

Mr. Skinner: My hon. Friend makes a reasonable point, and her remarks are not really out of order when one considers them against the background of the Government-sponsored Control of Smoke Pollution Bill, which my hon. Friend knows has changed. She arrives at the House this morning primarily to debate weights and measures and suddenly finds herself embroiled in a constitutional wrangle or crisis. Naturally she asks herself whether the same arguments apply to the Weights and Measures (Amendment) Bill. I can give my hon. Friend another piece of news. I have heard that the Government told the Conservative Member responsible for the Weights and Measures (Amendment) Bill to bobby off. [HON. MEMBERS: "Never."] I know that I am not supposed to speak to that Bill, but I mention in passing that we first find ourselves debating a completely different Bill, and then encounter, in respect of the Weights and Measures (Amendment) Bill, another example of chicanery. The Conservative Member who was to speak to that Bill entered the Chamber, looking active and as though he was ready to progress it, but after a few minutes the word carne through the grapevine of this gentleman's club——

Mrs. Dunwoody: There are also some good women in it.

Mr. Skinner: Yes, on this side of the House.

Mr. Anderson: Be charitable.

Mr. Skinner: The hon. Lady has been quiet: she will not tell us what the amendment is all about.
In this other bit of chicanery, the hon. Gentleman has been told to go away because the Government are happy to see this happen. I do not think any of the amendments will be discussed, and no doubt I shall be proved right.

Mr. Anderson: I know that my hon. Friend is always very understanding of Conservative Members. Having criticised the hon. Gentleman who withdrew his Weights and Measures Bill, will he pay tribute to the other side of the coin—the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter), who must have been subjected to the same Government pressure but who has stood his ground? That, surely, is tremendously to his credit. Despite all the blandishments, the possible preferment, the greasy pole, the knighthoods—whatever he may have been offered—the hon. Gentleman is determined to bring forward his Bill.

Mr. Cryer: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It has been suggested several times that the Weights and Measures Bill has been withdrawn. So far that is only a rumour, but I wonder whether as a matter of courtesy to you—and hence to the House—the promoter has given formal notice of withdrawal? I raise the question as one who has taken the trouble to put down several amendments in the expectation of debating them. What action can you take, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if the Bill's Second Reading is not moved and the promoter has simply drifted off in contempt of the House?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I have received no formal notification. We may be indulging in speculation and feeding on rumour. We had better wait until we reach the relevant Bill and discover whether the promoter is here to move his motion.

Mr. Skinner: According to some authorities, they have been informed that at the appropriate time today an attempt will be made to move the Bill to another day.
My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) wanted me to compliment the hon. Member for Basingstoke on having stood his ground. I think that my hon. Friend should look beyond today.
The hon. Member for Basingstoke is sat patiently with this Government Bill in his hand—well, a different Bill from the one that he had the other Friday—and I think that there is a possibility that he will be made a Whip. I have seen this happen before on a Friday. I have seen Conservative Members talk out a Bill and be promoted. I could name a few. They come into the Chamber late and talk Bills out; the next minute they are in the Whips' Office. Whether that is a promotion is neither here nor there. Hon. Members may finish up bringing in the snooker cue once a month with a message from the Queen. Is that a better job? It is certainly better paid, but I would regard it as something of a hack's job. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Basingstoke is really after that sort of promotion, but no doubt he will get his due reward.

Mr. Cohen: I take my hon. Friend's point. The hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) will, however, have to compete with the hon. Gentleman who should have moved the Second Reading of the Weights and Measures Bill. Perhaps he has drifted off because, like the Prime Minister, he did not know that a "large white" meant a loaf of bread. Surely that is why the Weights and Measures Bill should be considered—to ensure that a "large white" is a proper loaf of bread, not chalk, for instance.

Mr. Skinner: I do not know about the Prime Minister and the large white, but I know that when she used to serve in Alderman Roberts's shop in Grantham she was so keen on making a profit that she used to cut up the dolly mixtures to make sure that they were not over weight. Once someone gets down to that sort of thing we know that they are into making money. [HON. MEMBERS: She has been cutting ever since."] She certainly had a lot of practice then. People would come in for 2 oz of dolly mixtures and she would put them on the scales and if they were a bit over weight she would cut them in half.
When I went to Grantham I said to an old fellow there, "Do you remember her?" He said, "Oh aye, we all knew about Snobby Roberts." Of course, we are all fashioned in

our childhood; we are all products of our environment. If someone has spent her time behind a shop counter slicing the bacon so thin that people can see through it and cutting dolly mixtures in half, is it any wonder that when she becomes Prime Minister she is prepared to cut services? Is it any wonder that the NHS is under attack?
Mind you, she is not cutting the money at Downing Street. It is costing more than £5 million a year to keep it going—more than for Buckingham Palace. That is why the Queen gets so upset. But I shall leave that subject altogether, Mr. Deputy Speaker; I am more concerned about the constitutional propriety of changing "repeal" to "amend".

Mr. Ray Powell: My hon. Friend mentioned that the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) might be looking for promotion to the Whips' Office, and might be walking in with his billiard cue. He also mentioned the amount of time that the hon. Gentleman had spent on the Bill.
Earlier this week we heard about the amount of time that had been spent on other Bills—hours and hours. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes), for instance, had spent 162 hours considering the Electricity Bill. How much time was spent on this Bill? Was it two minutes, one minute, three and a half minutes? That is how much time the hon. Member for Basingstoke, who is expecting a promotion to either the House of Lords or the Whips' Office, has spent on it.

Mr. Skinner: That is the kernel of the argument. My hon. Friends and I expected a proper explanation after Mr. Speaker had told us what had happened. We raised points of order because we could not believe what we were hearing—that two "verbal" amendments were to be discussed on Third Reading.
That is so unusual that I was wondering whether the Mace would have to be removed. I was not sure of the exact procedure, and wondered whether the Serjeant at Arms—or perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Brown)—would have to come and take the Mace away. [HON. MEMBERS: "Or Heseltine."] The right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) would really be more appropriate, because he waved the Mace around his head. I thought that that might happen, because it happens when a Bill goes into Committee. It was an interesting little parliamentary scene for the connoisseur. I thought that because the Mace had not been taken away we were not in Committee and then I thought, "What cheek. The Government are amending a Bill that has never been debated in the House of Commons."
The hon. Member for Basingstoke who has promoted the Bill on behalf of the Government—we all know that that is what this is all about—was expected to explain, amid all the confusion, why suddenly a Bill to repeal the Clean Air Act is now a Bill to amend it. That can mean that it might improve it, whereas in the context of the ports Bill "repeal" means to destruct and to destroy. It was only to be expected that a full and proper explanation would be given, especially since there has not been discussion on this before. Well, we did not get much of an explanation——

Mrs. Dunwoody: We did not get any.

Mr. Skinner: No, we did not get any explanation and the Minister then made a brief appearance at the Dispatch Box. However, as she wants to safeguard her future, she


was not prepared to put her foot in it. If somebody is to start making charges, the Minister does not want it on her doorstep. It would be better in Ridley's backyard rather than in hers—[HON. MEMBERS: "What about planning permission?"] That is the position that we are in and it is a tidy old mess.

Mr. Ray Powell: My hon. Friend mentioned the Minister and perhaps he will recall that I was in full flight in my comments on the amendments but because I thought that the Minister would make a statement to solve our problems, I stopped—[Interruption.] Obviously, the Minister would not have been able to do that in a point of order or an intervention. I stopped halfway through my speech. I still have my speech with me and there is at least one hour's contribution left. Although I gave way to the Minister, she did not resolve the problem or get us out of this dilemma and that is typical of the way in which the Government act towards Opposition Members——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Briefly, please.

Mr. Powell: However, what is coming out now is something even worse because we know that some of our hon. Friends have prepared for the next debate but have now found that that Bill is to be withdrawn because yet again the Government have decided—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Interventions should be brief. I call Mr. Skinner.

Mr. Skinner: When my hon. Friend said that he would draw his remarks to a close, I was listening because I thought that as my hon. Friend is a gentleman he would give way——

Mr. Powell: My father was a miner.

Mr. Skinner: I was waiting to hear what the Minister would say in explanation and in answer to the many points that have been put forward. I knew that my hon. Friend had not dealt with everything because I remembered my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Mr. Meale) asking him whether he had read the document on pollution control. It was a fairly weighty tomb—no, tome. [Laughter.] Well, perhaps it should have been a tomb as well—a tomb to put the Government in.
I wondered why my hon. Friend was not speaking at length, or at least to some extent, about the document. I thought that my hon. Friend was anxious to hear the Minister explain the predicament caused by the Government which has landed on the shoulders of the hon. Member for Basingstoke. He is carrying the can. We have been able to remove part of that weight from his shoulders. It is true that he is acting in good old party fashion, but why should he carry all the blame? I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore had cut short his speech so that the Minister could rise to explain what had happened. However, she played it craftily—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, aye."] She said I want to reserve my comments for the Third Reading debate. She was cleverly trying to escape from explaining why the Government were pushing through a Bill via a Back Bencher, which is totally opposite to the Bill that went through the initial proceedings. I heard my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore bring his remarks to a close, but he did not get the answer that he expected.

Mrs. Dunwoody: Was it not worse than my hon. Friend has made out? The Minister said something revealing when she said, "If we are allowed to proceed without any further discussion to the Third Reading, I will make my remarks." What is happening with this Bill is what has happened with so many other Bills. Bills that look as if they are private Members' Bills are introduced, the Government having decided that they want them to go ahead. If we had not debated the amendments—as we are doing—then, and only then, would we have heard the Government's attitude.

Mr. Skinner: I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend.

Mr. Anderson: And worse, had we fallen for the stratagem of the Government and allowed the amendments through at this stage, surely the Government would have argued on Third Reading that there was a fait accompli and said, "After all, you agreed it." Is that not indicative of the serpentine way in which the Government are trying to move?
In passing, I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and my Welsh hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) on playing the House of Commons role in this matter——

Mrs. Dunwoody: He is not the only hon. Member from Wales.

Mr. Skinner: I liked my hon. Friend's description, "the serpentine way". Perhaps he was trying to say that the Government are lower than a snake's belly. At least, I thought that that was roughly what he was trying to say, but I know that he is a lawyer and that they do things differently.
Before we go any further I want to put on record the fact that this is no longer a private member's day. That has been established beyond peradventure this morning——

Mr. Anderson: Lawyers would say, "Beyond reasonable doubt."

Mr. Skinner: We thought that we were here to deal with private Members' business, but we have found out that this is really a Government Bill which has been shovelled towards a Back Bencher. Indeed, it was drawn up wrongly in the process. We also know that another private Member's Bill has been taken off the Order Paper—that is, if the Library authorities are correct.
I do not want anybody, especially the press, to suggest for one moment that there has been an attempt to scupper a prized private Members' day. What we have been doing this morning, and especially my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore, is stopping the Government in their tracks. Nobody should have any doubt any longer that this Friday is about private Members' business.
This has been one of the most obnoxious pieces of chicanery and conspiracy from the Government since they have been in power. Not content with having Monday to Thursday for getting through their own business, the Government have decided to use Friday as well. Let nobody say any different because we are not discussing Bills that were drawn out in the top six in the private Members' ballot. We are discussing Bills that have been slipped through with Government connivance. We should have no fears or worries about spoiling a private Member's


day because this week the Government have collared Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and now Friday for their own business.
The Prime Minister decides to go green. She wants a little green Bill to go through and she leaves it in the hands of the Secretary of State for the Environment. He produces a Bill that is upside down, so he passes it to a Tory Back Bencher. Then the Government do not have the guts to explain why confusion reigns.

Mr. Ray Powell: I owe my hon. Friend an apology. Earlier he suggested that this could have been arranged by the Whips' office. I have been a Whip. I was brought up in chapel, so I said that I did not suspect that the Whips on either side, or the usual channels, could be involved. That is why I made that comment, but I withdraw it and apologise, because my hon. Friend has proved beyond doubt that the Government and the Government Whips must have been involved in the process.

Mr. Skinner: The truth is that the Government Whips operate differently. My hon. Friend is a member of what I would call a loose federation in the Labour Whips' Office. When one is in the Government Whips' Office, however, one is a Minister and part of the collective responsibility, unless one is the Secretary of State for Wales. Then one does one's own thing. If one is a Government Whip, one has to toe the line. What happens is that one of those Whips comes along and says, "Pass the Bill down the line." There is always a pair of waiting hands in the gully or at third slip.

Mr. Cohen: My hon. Friend makes a serious point about the Government taking all the business of the House to themselves and not giving any of it to Back Benchers. To refer to my hon. Friend's earlier analogy, would he describe the Prime Minister as having given up cutting the dolly mixtures? She now wants all the dolly mixtures in the parliamentary timetable for herself. To elaborate on that analogy, does my hon. Friend agree that it does not extend to the liquorice? Instead of cutting everything, she has given a lot to the wealthy. It does not apply to the all-sorts. The wealthy have got more from this Government.

Mr. Skinner: I just cannot see the Prime Minister in the role of "Hello, Dolly." She does not conjure up that image for me. I have said before that she does not conjure up for me, either, the image of being one of the greens—in an anorak and wellies and carrying a bowl of rice.
It is just as well that we sussed this out. It has been good for Parliament. We do not change a great deal here. Dramatic changes take place outside Parliament. Most Opposition Members believe that, but we have to use Parliament as a sounding board and for passing legislation when dramatic changes are effective. Since we are here, however, we have got to do a job.
This morning—albeit it is a small beginning—we have been able to explain quite vividly that Parliament is being hijacked. What is worse, the private Member's Bill day is being hijacked. People talk about filibustering. That never occurs here. We hear about hon. Members debating a private Member's Bill and preventing other hon. Members from getting their Bills through. That is not what has

happened today. The Government had plans to get their own little Bill through, even though it came from a Department that got four other Government Bills wrong.
In the last few years the Department of the Environment has introduced Bills that had to be drastically changed. On at least two or three occasions it had to go to the law courts to get them changed as a result of action taken outside this place. On other occasions, the same Department had to introduce retrospective legislation to put right previous legislation. This is another example. On this occasion it said, "There won't be many there on Friday. We will slip it through on Back Benchers' day." That is what the game is all about.

Mr. Cryer: Does my hon. Friend recall that in her brief remarks the Minister claimed that local authorities had been consulted about the Bill? She said that there had been wide consultation. She claimed that hon. Members would have been involved in consultations with the local authorities in their constituencies. Is it not outrageous that, after the huge panoply of consultation that the Minister claimed had taken place, the Government should have produced a shoddy Bill such as this instead of adopting the proper procedure—a public Bill in Government time?

Mr. Skinner: We always hear about consultation. I find it rather strange that next Thursday we are to discuss procedure on some other Bills. Why are we to do that? Because over the years people have discovered that there is an inherent weakness in the way in which those Bills are proceeded with in the House in that the Government have gradually invaded what used to be private Bills. Those private Bills, which were generally of a very minor nature, have suddenly become much more political, and it has become so bad that next Thursday we are to debate changing the procedure for private Bills because the Government have allowed and have even encouraged the private Bill procedure to have a more overt political tone.

Mrs. Dunwoody: Does my hon. Friend agree that, certainly in transport Bills, the Government are using the private Bill procedure as an alternative means of getting planning permission? They are pushing through the House major Bills which are taking the place of normal planning procedure. They are getting them on the statute book to bring about what they could not achieve by using the agreed procedures.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will resist the temptation to expand on that point. Let us stick to Friday, this Bill and these amendments.

Mr. Skinner: I must answer that because, although you have to guide us, Mr. Deputy Speaker, a few of us were here this morning and we witnessed a parliamentary scene of confusion that we have not witnessed in all the years that we have been here and Mr. Speaker used words——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Let me disabuse the hon. Gentleman. I assure him that I have been here in spirit since 9.30 this morning, I have heard almost every word that has been said, and the Chair is indivisible in these matters.

Mr. Skinner: What was initially a motley crew has now developed into concerted, collective action. On private Members' days we do not have Whips and we do not


accept one person's point of view on any particular issue. From the explanations given by my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore and others, it is pretty clear that there has been a conspiracy by the Government, on the Bill.
You have to sit in the Chair on many Fridays, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You also sit there from Mondays to Thursdays, and you expect a different argument on Fridays. But today it is the same argument. It is a Government Bill which has been produced by the Government and parcelled off to a Tory Back Bencher who has to take the flak. We are discussing specifically whether the amendments to replace "repeal" with "amend" are acceptable, and to reach a conclusion on that we have to find out why the word "repeal" was used in the first place. We have to find out where the murky trail began. We have discovered that it did not begin at Basingstoke. We found that it began in Downing street, in the Cabinet, and in the Department of the Environment. That is where the trail led us, and once we had discovered that we had every right to consider the amendments against the background of Government interference in a private Member's day.
We have no alternative. We are now engaged in a battle against the Government and that is not normal practice on a Friday. Although I find it hard to take my Opposition hat off on any day, most of us try to consider Fridays in a different light. That is what we are doing here today and Opposition Members are fully apprised.

Ms. Quin: Is it not the case that by introducing amendments at this late stage the Government are avoiding the consultation that they should be having with the many interested parties? Is it not also the case that, by introducing a Bill in this way, they are avoiding consultations which would be of great value to both sides of the House?

Mr. Skinner: A properly drawn up Bill dealing with the environment including these measures, would be supported. Such a Bill should be drawn up after proper consultation with local authorities—not the type of consultation that the dockers have had—and with hon. Members. In this age, more and more people are concerned about the environment and everyone knows that we cannot patch the hole in the ozone layer by using some sort of Tebbit-like entrepreneur. We cannot clean up the environment by allowing market forces to proliferate. Imagine saying to somebody, "We've a hole in the ozone layer and we are leaving it to an entrepreneur on an enterprise allowance to patch it up." It is nonsense.
We all know that if the environment is to be cleaned up, it has to be done by collective action. Once we start talking about collective action, we are talking about society, and that is a word that the Prime Minister does not like. Only people who are prepared to back philosophically collective action can sort out the problems surrounding the amendments. It cannot be done by the operation of market forces. I can see the twinkle in the eyes of many of my hon. Friends now that we have moved into this territory.

Mr. Ray Powell: We should be considering what the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) will say about all the comments that have been made on this issue. What part has he played in the conspiracy? When he walked down Whitehall to obtain his instructions, was he told, "You will be all right because we will not reach the second or third Bill on the Order Paper"? If that is the case, all the

preparation for the debates on the Weights and Measures (Amendment) Bill and the Sunday Trading (Reform) Bill will be wasted. By the time the hon. Member for Basingstoke gives the House his explanation there will he no time left.
All that is engendered by a Government conspiracy against us and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) said, it is taking place on a private Member's day. It will affect Bills other than those on the Order Paper today. Some hon. Members have sat up all night preparing for the introduction of a Bill under the ten minute rule. They have now found out that if the Government want something, they conspire to ensure that an hon. Member will obtain it for them, but when they do not want something they are prepared to stop private Members' Bills. That is what we should be looking at.

Mr. Skinner: I agree with my hon. Friend. It is worth saying that later today the Elimination of Poverty in Retirement Bill will be moved. I offer a challenge now to the Government: when the Bill is moved at 2.30 pm, do not object to it. If they believe in looking after old-age pensioners by giving them proper aid and assistance, they should not object to the Bill. If they can destroy a private Member's day by bringing forward their own considerations, they should not stop Bills of that nature. Hon. Members have queued up to obtain an opportunity to introduce a Bill under the ten-minute rule.
Why were verbal amendments moved? Why did the amendments arrive only this morning? As the Bill passed its previous stages several Fridays ago—you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, may have been in the Chair when that happened—why was it not revealed that the Bill had been given the wrong title? Three or four weeks is a long time for legislation. The Government could have said, "Do you know what we have done? We have given the Bill the wrong title. Instead of giving it a title to amend the Clean Air Act, we have given it a title to repeal it."
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Three or four weeks have elapsed, yet nothing has happened, which means that the mistake was not spotted by civil servants. Let us assume that civil servants knew and that, rather like "Yes, Minister", Sir Humphrey or his equivalent said, "Hallo, hallo, hallo, look at this lot. The Bill will repeal the Clean Air Act instead of amending it. I said that it should be amended before I told you to find an hon. Member who would introduce it." Let us assume that Sir Humphrey or his counterpart said to the Secretary of State for the Environment, "Here is a good Bill. It has a green image and will be like a glow-worm in Downing Street. It will show that the Prime Minister means business."
I think that I know what went wrong in those four weeks. My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) hinted at the answer at 9.40 am. I think that the Government were aware of the mistake but hoped that it would escape attention, as it did on the first occasion. They thought, "We have made a mess of this and we will probably place the Chair in a predicament", which was the case when Mr. Speaker had to make a statement about the new 18-year development. They thought that they would slide the Bill through and get on to the next one.

Mr. Anderson: Is it possible that Sir Humphrey knew the effect of the error from the outset but that the Government, as with other matters, refused to listen?

Mr. Skinner: Normally, we see civil servants shuffling papers back and forth to the Minister. I have been here all morning, but I have not seen any paper going back and forth. Labour Members have asked many questions and my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich raised several constitutional matters. One would have thought that if what we were saying was untrue a little bit of paper would have come from the Box.

Mr. Anderson: Confetti.

Mr. Skinner: Yes, confetti. There has been no paper from the Box.
Labour Members sussed out the Government early on. I am not prepared to accept lectures from the Government about private Members' Bill time. They have hijacked a private Members' day to pass a Bill that was wrongly drafted.

Mrs. Teresa Gorman: Does not the hon. Gentleman think that the answer may be that my hon. Friend the Minister is so competent that she does not need to be briefed and has all the answers waiting for the hon. Gentleman?

Mr. Skinner: The hon. Lady has not been here all morning. I suppose that she was down at Wimbledon, getting ready for the ticket touts in June and July. Had she been here she would have heard the minister speak briefly, because she has been handed the difficult job of trying to explain away why it is that the amendment seeks to make the Bill wholly different from what it was before. The minister dodged the issue. If the hon. Lady had been here, she would have thought that it was funny that the Minister should get up to explain yet explain nothing although she would have kept her mouth shut because she would have thought, "She is one of ours". She would also have thought, "There must be some reason for the Minister's reticence." I did not hear the Minister explain or give any answers to my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore. The Minister wanted to intervene, but did not give the answers. If the hon. Lady had been here, she would have known the answer. As she asked, I have given her the answer.

Mrs. Dunwoody: The Bill was obviously drafted by the Department, which would have used parliamentary draftsmen. They are specific in their instructions to Ministers that the English used must reflect accurately legal interpretations. Is it not a shame that they handed over to the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) a document that is so deficient in its drafting? The draftsmen not only missed their own incompetence, but had to bring in a rarely used procedural measure to do something about it. They should apologise to the hon. Member for Basingstoke, who has been put in an awkward position.

Mr. Skinner: Although the Minister made only a brief statement, she could at least have done what my hon. Friend has suggested. She could have said to her hon. Friend the member for Basingstoke, "I am not going to say much about the amendments because they are a bit of an embarrassment to me. We have placed you in something of a predicament." The hon. Gentleman has had to sit here all morning. I imagine that they told him beforehand that the Bill would be through quickly and he may have expected

it to be all over by 10 am or 10.30 am. That may have been the signal he was given. The Minister should say, "We are sorry that the Bill was wrongly drafted. I apologise for all the trouble and embarrassment caused." Even at this stage the Minister could intervene and apologise for the trouble that she has caused him. We do not need apologies. In many ways, we have scored a parliamentary triumph today in thwarting the Government's activities.[Laughter. Some Tory Members laugh. Had they been here earlier and listened to the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook), who spoke briefly on the matter, they would have known that what I am saying is said against the background of a Conservative Member fully understanding the muddle that the Government have created. I do not want to put words into his mouth, but he more or less said that in typical, Tory coded language.

Mr. Cryer: The Walker code.

Mr. Skinner: It was a bit more overt than that. The hon. Gentleman was astounded that such a procedure was being developed. He wanted to know how, when and why. He did not go on at length, but he made his point and he did not receive any answers. We have not had any answers either. The hon. Member for Orpington might explain to his hon. Friends who were not here at the beginning how the new procedure was brought in. We have sussed out the truth. We are trying not only to deal with the Bill and the amendments, but to ensure that such a mistake does not happen again. I hope that the Bill will go through. We have tried to ensure that such a mistake does not happen before with the Department of the Environment. Other Bills have been taken up in court and have caused the introduction of retrospective legislation. We have said, "Don't do it again." Then the Secretary of State has done it again. They have got the legislation wrong five times, and this makes it six.
Why should we just say, "We are sorry that you have got it wrong. You have brought in a bill that is totally wrecked compared with what it was at the beginning"? We must put it on the record that we shall not allow Parliament to be abused in this way or for private Member's day to be taken over by the Government to get their Bills through rather than use the opportunity on proper Government days to introduce proper environmental measures.

Mr. Cryer: My hon. Friend has suggested that the decent thing for the Minister to do would be to apologise for the abuse which the Government, through this shabby little conspiracy, have heaped upon the House. Does my hon. Friend agree that expecting an apology from the Government to a democratic institution is like asking for snow not to melt in spring? The Government's hallmark is what Lord Hailsham described as the elective dictatorship. When the Labour Government were in a minority and, ever since, with a majority of 100 on the Conservative side, the Conservatives have tried to trample on the rights of the House. They have used that majority and Lord Hailsham has never uttered a single criticism of the true elective dictatorship with which we are faced.

Mr. Skinner: It is not just that. We do not expect Lord Hailsham to defend the rights of working class people. It has been left to Labour Members to sort out this constitutional and parliamentary chaos. It is significant that throughout the debate—it is now nearly 1 o'clock


—not a single member of the rag tag and bobtail parties has been present. Those Social and Liberal Democrats go round the country talking about Parliament. We hear the leader of the officials and the leader of the provos on television. They talk about the need to reform Parliament. Where are they today? We have seen neither hide nor hair of them. They are not concerned about the way in which parliamentary procedures are trampled upon. They have not turned up for work. It has been left to Labour Members to discover the way in which the Government have taken over this Friday for their purposes.
Those Members who should be here have gone missing. I suppose that they are down in the Vale of Glamorgan —some good that will do them! I have been told that they have a meeting with Michael Meadowcroft because he has started another party. They are spawning—it is like mushrooms in a field. Every time I pick up a newspaper, there is another party, so we cannot expect those people to be here advising on the parliamentary chaos when they have so much chaos within their ranks.

Mr. Cryer: They are experts.

Mr. Skinner: There is no doubt about that. In the last election they were going to appeal to the electorate by saying, "Leave it to us. We will work with anyone." They are not working today, are they? They are not here. I knew that for a lie at the beginning. During the 1987 election, I saw one of the leaders get on one bus and another get on another bus. I said to a mate, "Did you notice that? They are supposed to be together but they are on different buses!"
We do not want those people to tell us about how to make sure that Back Benchers' rights are protected against a Government who are prepared to trample all over those rights and to bring in a Bill using all sorts of methods so that it can weave its way through Parliament. It is nearly 1 o'clock.

Mr. Cohen: I have followed the arguments of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) about the way in which the amendments and the Bill have come about. I agree that they may have emanated from Downing street. An even more sinister possibility which my hon. Friend should consider is that the Bill started out repealing the exemption from the statutory nuisance provisions. If the amendment is passed, people will be able to create a smoke nuisance.
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The sinister aspect is that, perhaps the Government meant "amend" in the first place but put "repeal" because they wanted to defuse any opposition so that the issue would not be raised. Now, at this late stage, the Government have come up with this new procedure—verbal amendments—to stick in the word "repeal". They avoided doing so earlier when there could have been criticism and a proper debate on the matter. Will my hon. Friend consider that sinister possibility?

Mr. Skinner: That is a more sinister argument. What my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton says is interesting and quite possible. We should examine what he is saying, which is that when the Government first introduced the Bill they deliberately put in "repeal" to put people off, so that they would say, "This is not a matter for us." Then on Third Reading, they changed it. That is really sinister.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leyton has been right on such matters before. If this sort of procedure is to take place we should try it regularly on every Bill put before the House. We are to start discussing the Dock Work Bill on Monday and we have already discussed the possibility of changing its title so that instead of repealing the docks scheme we will amend it.
Imagine the sort of measures that could be carried through when we are in Government—my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton might be a junior Minister like the hon. Member for Surrey, South West (Mrs. Bottomley)., or even in the Cabinet, and he could quietly say to me and one or two others, "Don't worry about the Bill on Friday—we don't mean to do what it says because we are going to change its title; we only put it in to keep the Tories o ff." It would be an interesting development to bring in Bills which were the opposite of what they were intended to be. Talk about a circus—the Government have done some tricks in here from time to time but if this is what they are up to now, we shall need the sharp eyes of my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton on all these Bills. I shall certainly go through them all from now on. Most of the Bills that are being fetched off the shelf and handed down to Tory Back Benchers for a bit of kudos could mean the opposite of what they say, so we shall have to come here every Friday from now on.

Mrs. Dunwoody: I want to vote for some of them.

Mr. Skinner: We shall have to have two briefs. My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) says that she will come to vote. It will mean a bit more work, but we shall have to prepare a brief in favour of the Bill and one against it in case it is amended at the last minute. We have no alternative.

Mr. Anderson: During the past two decades the Government have been bound to set out the way in which Bills affect finances and manpower, and the European Community. Will it be possible for the Government to add a third consideration—whether the Bill should be taken seriously at its face value?

Mr. Skinner: Imagine what the papers would say if the Labour party was doing this—what would have happened if a Labour Government had shovelled this Bill to a Back Bencher? The headlines in the Tory press the next day would have read, "Labour in complete bungle." We have not seen many members of the press in the Gallery today. The press would have said, "Total incompetence". The newspapers would have used all the epithets that they could think of, but I bet that they will not do that on this occasion. We shall have an opportunity in future to examine the matter, but we had better be careful about all the provisions in this Bill.
I have spoken for a long time because we are dealing with a constitutional matter. We thought that today's debate would be about a minor smoke pollution control Bill, but it has not been about that at all. When I discussed the Bill earlier with my hon. Friends, we thought that it would finish fairly early—we did not know that the Government were up to some dirty work, but we have found them out. Having found them out, we explored all the possible reasons as to why they had hijacked this private Members' day and brought it under their own control.
In the past three hours or so we have made a protest, not just because of the Bill but because we have to stop the evil practice of turning the titles of Bills upside down in the course of their preparation. We have to stop the nonsense of Bills going through on the nod without proper debate. Today's happenings will make us wary about that in future.
For all those reasons, I am happy in the knowledge that my hon. Friends now understand the matter more clearly. As we approach the end of today's business, we are more aware and better understand the way in which the procedures of the House have been bludgeoned by the Government. That has to stop. For that reason, on every Friday in future while the Government remain in office we shall closely scrutinise all Bills to find out whether they mean the opposite of what they are supposed to mean and to make sure that this is the last time the Government can hijack a private Members' day for their own purposes. That is what we have learnt this morning.

Mr. Anderson: I should like to develop the theme of elective dictatorships. It has emerged forcefully during the debate that a tribute must be paid to my hon. Friends the Members for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) and for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) on carrying out a magnificent House of Commons job.
When we take parties of schoolchildren or others through the Members' Lobby, we show them the statues of Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee. There is also an empty plinth. In future, it may have on it a statue of either my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover or my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore, because today's debate has shown them to be great House of Commons men. We congratulate them on their forensic skills. What appeared to be a sprat of a Bill was proved by them to be something far more significant. My two hon. Friends have followed the clues in a fine forensic way from Basingstoke to the very steps of Downing street, and that in itself is a tribute to their skills. They have shown the way in which the Government are able to manipulate private Members' time.
I generally feel sympathy for you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and for your colleagues in the Chair when you are subjected to difficulties posed by the Government. The Minister is greatly respected by all hon. Members, and because of that she has been landed with the baby—if that is not a sexist term. She has been forced to take the flak in quite an undeserved way. The hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter), to whom we all pay tribute, in all innocence accepted the Bill. From a legal viewpoint, I would like to know the terms of the contract that the hon. Gentleman concluded with the Government. What were the promises and undertakings made by the Government about the time that the hon. Gentleman would be engaged in the House on the Bill? He was probably told, "Look, here is a little Bill off the shelf. We promise that it will last only a couple of minutes and you can be back in your constituency opening a fete"—or whatever one does on a Friday. "We give you our solemn promise as a Government that it will not take long." However, because of a mistake made by the Government, it is just after 1 o'clock and the poor hon. Member for Basingstoke is still here.
The Minister began by saying it was an error. She refused to say whose error it was, because—if she had been smoked out—if she had been frank and had said that it was an error, either of the parliamentary draftsmen or of the legal advisers in the Department of the Environment, she would have let the cat out of the bag. We would have known straight away —as we all know in reality—that it is a Government Bill that masquerades as a private Member's Bill on a Private Member's day.
That happens all too frequently. When I entered the House in 1966 Private Member's Bills were just that. So long as the first eight Members put forward a reasonable and not eccentric Bills, they would expect to get their Bills through, and other Bills, too—given a fair wind—had a chance. Now, effectively, the Government have taken over Private Member's Bills procedure and even the first six in the ballot have no chance of making any serious progress with their Bills, unless they have the full authority and the concurrence of the Government.

Mr. Gerald Bermingham: Is my hon. Friend not understating his case? We have seen on a number of occasions Bills of hon. Members in the first six in the ballot not succeeding if the Government have not liked them. An example was the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing), to assist the handicapped. Even when a Bill is high up in the chain, it often suffers from the payroll vote of Members who are present on a Friday and can defeat crucial and major parts of it. Nowadays, unless a Private Member has a Bill in which the Government acquiesce, all sorts of devices are used to block it.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I realise that the hon. Gentleman is still on his preamble and is making some general remarks, but I am sure that he will now anchor his remarks to this Bill.

Mr. Anderson: I shall be brief because I know that other hon. Members want to speak before we proceed to Third Reading. I am joining my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) in exposing what has increasingly been Government practice—that is, to obliterate what used to be the intermediary bodies between Government and citizens. They have done it across the board. They have done that with the trade unions, with local government and with all bodies that used to filter and alter the views of Government. We have in Parliament an exact example of what Government have done. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) said, it is a form of elective dictatorship.
When Lord Hailsham used the phrase "elective dictatorship" against the Labour Government, I confess that I had a certain sympathy with him. I would now consider his views with greater esteem and consider them to be more credible if we had had even a peep from Lord Hailsham about what is happening under this Government. It is clear that, when he criticised an elective dictatorship, he was doing it in a one-eyed, selective and partisan way.

Mr. Bermingham: My hon. Friend may not be aware that Lord Hailsham said this morning that the present Government were sitting on their head and thinking with their bottom.

Mr. Anderson: That was only because it concerned an area in which Lord Hailsham has a special interest—that


of the law. When he sees the other major inroads into private liberties—the other major demands made by this authoritarian Government—and says nothing, we can hold certain views on Lord Hailsham.
I leave elective dictatorship there. I commend my hon. Friends for the tremendous work that they have done on behalf of the House. I look forward to developing my points on Third Reading.

Mr. Win Griffiths: When I entered the House this morning, I expected a completely different sort of day from that which I have so far experienced. Earlier this week, I was advised that the Control of Smoke Pollution Bill was uncontroversial and would go through with little debate, but that the Weights and Measures (Amendment) Bill would excite some discussion—and I prepared myself for that possibility. Having listened to what will probably go down as some of the most eminent contributions in defence of Back Benchers' and private Members' rights, I discover that the Weights and Measures (Amendment) Bill will not be debated. Instead, I find myself in the midst of a constitutional and procedural crisis. Moreover, it is a crisis of which the generality of right hon. Members are unaware.
Arriving at the House this morning, I detected a whispering hum in the Tea Room about the verbal amendments to the Control of Smoke Pollution Bill that were to be debated this morning—the like of which had not been seen for 18 years. Only right hon. and hon. Members who happened to be present in the House this morning were aware of those amendments.
I still hope that the Minister or the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) will tell the House who drafted the Bill. At one point, my sympathies lay with the hon. Member for Basingstoke for having been handed such a measure by his Government. However, his continued silence throughout the debate makes me wonder whether he expects some kind of preferment afterwards for being so stoical in accepting without comment all the remarks that have been made.
The explanatory and financial memorandum makes the Bill's intentions fairly clear. However, the repeal of the long title is quite against the legislation's intentions as described in the explanatory and financial memorandum. I hope that an acceptable agreement will be reached that will allow the small but worthy improvement to the environment that the Bill would provide—at least as reflected in the explanatory and financial memorandum—to be made as if the Bill had been allowed to progress with its original title.
I look forward to a proper explanation of how major errors came to be made. Will the civil servants concerned be exonerated? Will the hon. Member for Basingstoke take it upon himself to accept the blame, or will that be done by the Minister? Or will the blame be accepted by the Secretary of State for the Environment who has not been prepared to come to the House today and face the flak?

Mr. Ray Powell: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I realise that, in an invisible state, you have been involved in the debate since 9.30 am, and will appreciate that our debate has been about the two amendments. The dilemma facing hon. Members has resolved on those two amendments, but we should now like to bring the debate to a conclusion. With your assistance, Mr. Deputy

Speaker, I am sure that we shall be able to do so. Perhaps we will be informed by the Minister of the Government's response to the points made by right hon. and hon. Members.
I hope that this point of order will be helpful. If we are given some kind of assurance—perhaps that the amendments will be withdrawn so that they can be dealt with when they have been properly tabled—we may be able to resolve the matter this afternoon so that we can get on with the next debate.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): Order. I have noticed that the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) is trying to catch my eye. He would, of course, need the leave of the House to speak. [HON. MEMBERS: "The Minister."' I now understand that the Minister may wish to speak, again with the leave of the House, so I shall call her.

Mrs. Virginia Bottomley: rose——

Mr. Cohen: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Before the Minister speaks, may I make a brief point? Perhaps she can tell us the status of the part in summary on the face of the Bill which refers to the removal
exemption from the statutory nuisance provision of…smoke from certain domestic chimneys".

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That is not a point of order; it is a point for debate. It would be helpful for the whole House—I am grateful to the hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) for his suggestion—if we were now to hear the Minister.

Mrs. Bottomley: Being mindful of the fact that today is a private Members' day, I have done my best to be rather restrained in my remarks. I thought it proper to debate the amendments, particularly in the unusual circumstances—it is 18 years since anyone tried to move a verbal amendment. That seemed an appropriate use of parliamentary time.
I had hoped to speak at much greater length on Third Reading about my experience of these matters. Much concern has been expressed to the Department—whether in Bolton or Barnsley, in Bristol, Scunthorpe or Sheffield—about the burning of buses and the pollution that it causes, let alone the problems emanating from domestic premises, where non-dark smoke causes offence and nuisance to neighbours who are powerless to obtain redress.
Let us examine the history of the matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) is known by everyone in the House to have been a distinguished member of the Select Committee on the Environment. He has a considerable knowledge of environmental matters and indeed of air pollution: he contributed to the Select Committee's report on air pollution. I am surprised that hon. Members should even suggest that he is not a man of great experience, with clear views on the way in which he wished to use his private Member's slot.
My hon. Friend, graciously and kindly, consulted the Department about whether there were matters of concern to him, with his knowledge of air pollution, which would also be popular and acceptable and would play an appropriate part. I ceased only recently to be a Back-Bench Member—a week ago the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) said I had been a Minister for only


five minutes; it is another 10,000 minutes since he said that—but it is important, if a Bill is to meet with success, for it to fit within the general framework.
I said earlier that it was a considerable source of regret that this error was not spotted. The fact is that clause 1 stands fairly and clearly. The substance of the Bill is perfectly straightforward, but for one reason or another its long title did not contain a small substitution. As I have said, it is a source of regret.
It might help the House if—this measure will meet with great popularity among the constituents of all hon. Members——

Mr. Bermingham: rose——

Mrs. Bottomley: No, I would rather not give way.
My hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke may feel that in the circumstances the best way forward would be for him to seek to withdraw his amendments so that progress could be made on the Bill and it can be considered in another place.

Mr. Hunter: With the leave of the House, may I say how deeply I regret accepting the advice to table the amendments? I apologise to the Chair and to Opposition Members for any embarrassment that this hassle may have caused. I meant no discourtesy.
It has been an interesting and lengthy debate. I stress that there was no conspiracy. It was a monumental blunder. Obviously, as the Bill bears my name I must accept responsibility for it. The original draft of the Bill was changed long before Second Reading. It transpires that the blunder was committed at that stage and that the title of an original draft Bill was not changed. I did not reaslise that at the time of the Bill's Second Reading on 3 March. It was brought to my attention only at the beginning of this week, shortly before the Select Committee on the Environment went away for two days, which meant that I was not in a position to seek advice about it. Therefore, in a hurry, I agreed yesterday to table the amendments.
I accept the advice given by my hon. Friend the Minister. I believe that these matters can be resolved in the House of Lords and, with that in mind, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Hunter: I beg to move, that the Bill be now read the Third time.
If the past few hours are put to one side, the fact remains that this small Bill is an important contribution in the battle against pollution.
Clause 1 seeks to bring certain smoke emitted from domestic premises within the statutory nuisance provisions of part III of the Public Health Act 1936 or, for Scotland, of the Public Health Act (Scotland) 1897. In clause 1, the category of smoke emissions is that of non-dark smoke from dwellings that are not in smoke control areas. So far, that aspect of smoke control does not exist. It is a loophole in the existing legislation and the Bill seeks to close it.
The Clean Air Acts of 1956 and 1968 essentially declare three points. First, there is the prohibition on dark smoke—the most pollutant smoke—from any building except in

special circumstances under the regulations introduced by the Secretary of State. Secondly, within the smoke control areas, there is a prohibition on dark and non-dark or clean smoke from all premises. Yet again, there can be exceptions and some were specified when the original smoke control orders were issued. Others have been specified subsequently by the Secretary of State. The third essential aspect of the clean air legislation is that——

Mr. Harry Greenway: When my hon. Friend refers to non-dark or clean smoke, does he include washed smoke?

Mr. Hunter: I do not have the precise details, but I know that the public wealth Acts refer to the Ringelman scale by which the cleanliness or otherwise of smoke is gauged. I imagine that it includes the category that my hon. Friend has in mind, but I cannot be absolutely sure.
The emission of non-dark smoke can in certain circumstances be deemed to be a statutory nuisance. Clause 1 seeks to extend the categories of smoke emission that can be deemed to be a statutory nuisance to include non-dark smoke from dwellings that are not situated in smoke control areas. The existing statutory provisions do not apply to smoke from dwellings that are situated outside smoke control areas. They are limited to industrial premises. The purpose of the clause is to extend the existing statutory provisions that now apply only to industrial premises to domestic dwellings.
The Bill is the result of a consultation process. Opposition Members unfairly ridiculed that suggestion when it was made earlier. In December 1986, the Department of the Environment, the Scottish Development Department and the Welsh office published their review of air pollution control in Great Britain. They published a follow-up paper in December 1988. It was a lengthy consultation process. Local authorities, local authority associations, trade associations, companies, firms and individuals took part in the process. The recommendation that is embodied in clause 1 was made by the Government and it was supported by 64 representations. Four were against. There was overwhelming support for the recommendation.
Clause 2 has two subsections. Subsection (1) refers to the "occupier of the premises." A loophole in the existing legislation has been exposed. The Clean Air Act 1956 and the Clean Air Act 1968 make the occupier the person who is legally responsible. The Acts specify "the occupier". It may be, however, that people other than the occupier in law start a fire that emits the offending smoke. The object of subsection (1) is to make not just the occupier but any person "who causes or permits the emission" responsible. It is a neat tidying up of that loophole.
Local authorities have faced problems over securing prosecutions. It has been difficult for them to establish when combustion has taken place illegally, particularly at night, and the precise nature of the smoke emitted. Subsection (2) is designed to close that loophole and to make prosecutions easier. During the consultation process there was overwhelming support for the proposal that such a change in the law should be made.
The Bill encompasses little but it would achieve a lot if it were passed. I regret that this morning and during the early part of this afternoon we have had to spend, quite rightly a great deal of time on an important matter. I hope that that will not cloud hon. Members' judgment when


they consider the Bill in its own right. I commend the Bill strongly as I believe it will close loopholes and will be a vital part of our legislation against pollution.

Mr. Bermingham: I shall be extremely brief in asking the Minister for a number of assurances. First, once more parliamentary draftsmanship has led to great delay. Let us be open and honest and admit that it is not the first time, and probably will not be the last time, that that has happened. The basic problem is that "amend" and "repeal" have different meanings.
Secondly, clause 2(2) should be re-examined as it does not cover the problem that has arisen on a number of occasions on demolition sites. A demolition site is said to be a site where a trade or industry is being carried on. The Minister will be well aware that much demolition is taking place in the north of England to rejuvenate inner cities and other areas. That demolition is often carried out by contractors, not local authorities because the local authorities own the land or the premises to be demolished. I know that there have been a number of serious emissions of dark smoke from demolition sites without prosecution because of certain loopholes.
Will the Minister also consider the problem that occurs when explosives are used to demolish buildings? A dust cloud is still a cloud, and can be a very dark cloud which causes great nuisance to the owners of adjoining land. That problem does not appear to be resolved by subsection (2).
Finally, I wish to draw the Minister's attention to the burning of vehicles, which is what might be called the Barnsley and Bolton problem, which I am aware of from yesteryear. In particular, buses and their tyres are burnt. That is often done outside smoke-control areas on sites or land belonging to people who do not give permission for the burning. Will the Minister consult her officials so that when the Bill is considered in another place—I certainly will not impede its progress—the wording of clause 2 can be altered to deal with that problem? The owner of the land is not a willing party to those practices, particularly to the cutting up and burning of buses which causes great offence in the Peak park areas and parts of Lancashire.
I trust that the Minister will undertake to look at those points which should be considered in another place.

Mr. Harry Greenway: I shall be brief, although I have had the pleasure of listening to some long and remarkable speeches this morning.
I am very interested in the Bill as I welcome legislation which closes loopholes on pollution, particularly smoke pollution which is perhaps the most noxious in that it induces severe illnesses such as congestion of the lungs, very bad throats and bad colds. I well remember the London smogs of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which were largely caused by smoke. Walking through those smogs, one could not see one's hand before one's face, and as one walked along hoping that one was going in the right direction, bits in the air would hit one in the face. It was a very unpleasant experience. For that reason, smog masks were introduced to protect people's noses, but their eyes could not be protected. In the school where I was teaching at the time a great many children became extremely ill due

to that smoke pollution. A great deal of it came from domestic chimneys across London and in many cases there were aggressive fires.
I should like to ask my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) and my hon. Friend the Minister what the penalties will be for those who are caught by the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke spent no time—I know that he had other things to say—explaining what will happen to a person convicted of an offence under the Bill. It would not be right for the House to agree to the passage of any measure without knowing what penalties are involved.
Clause 1 seeks the
Removal of exemption from statutory nuisance of smoke from certain domestic chimneys.
That means that private individuals will be subject to the provisions of the Bill.

Mr. Hunter: What happens under the existing law to the owners of industrial premises which emit offending smoke will now happen, theoretically, to the domestic dweller. In the first instance, an abatement notice is served requiring the nuisance to cease. If that is not complied with, the local authority may apply to the magistrates court for a nuisance order and finally—theoretically—the matter may go to the county court.

Mr. Greenway: I am grateful for that enlightenment. We need to pay attention to the fact that procedures currently enforced against industry will be enforced against individuals. It is extremely important for the House and particularly for my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke and the Minister to say that they would expect any court to deal with an individual householder more leniently than an industrial concern. It is a serious weakness in the Bill that attention is not paid to that important matter. If my hon. Friend the Minister can give the House an assurance as to how she expects the courts to act in relation to individuals, we shall be grateful.
There seems to be no difficulty about the definition of dark smoke and non-dark smoke, although you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will know that for centuries the election or non-election of a Pope has been signified by the appearance of white or dark smoke above the sistine chapel. The process for producing dark smoke has not always worked and the wrong colour smoke has sometimes appeared, so there can be difficulties about the definition of dark smoke. That should be borne in mind. The burning of very green wood in any household will produce dark smoke, but it is not dirty smoke. That, too, should be dealt with by the promoter of the Bill and by my hon. Friend the Minister.

Mr. Ray Powell: I shall be brief because we want to move on to the next debate. But for the two amendments, I could have delivered my speech—which took hours last night to prepare—in a reasonable time. I assume, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that your advice would be to save my speech so that if the Bill comes back from another place I shall not have wasted my copious notes.
It has been an interesting debate and the House, the Government and people who make blunders have been taught a lesson. I must tell the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) that we all make blunders on occasions and take decisions that, with the benefit of hindsight, we realise that we should not have taken. I


assure the hon. Member for Basingstoke that his efforts have taught hon. Members and the Government a useful lesson. I shall be brief because my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) and other hon. Members want to deal with the next important debate, but when the Bill returns from the other place we shall consider it closely.

Mr. Cryer: I travelled this morning from home in Bradford, having attended a constituency meeting last night, to talk about the Weights and Measures (Amendment) Bill.
The debate has been important. The fact that the Weights and Measures (Amendment) Bill—another privatisation measure that the Government attempted to sneak through the parliamentary procedures without proper scrutiny—has been withdrawn is a minor victory. I am pleased that the two amendments to the Control of Smoke Pollution Bill have been withdrawn.
The hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) courteously took all the flak directed at the Government by Opposition Members. That should be recognised in the record, because if anyone is to blame it is the Government. The Government have a vast army of civil servants and expert parliamentary draftsmen. Nevertheless, the error was made.
Opposition Members are pleased that the amendments have been withdrawn. The reason why there will be no Division on the general principle of the Bill is the understanding that the amendments will be restored in another place in a better, clearer and less hasty way. We shall be looking out for that when we consider Lords amendments to the Bill. If amendments are not made in the Lords, the Bill will be confused and untidy because it will have repealed section 16(1) (a) of the Clean Air Act 1956 and there will be nothing to amend. It could be argued that that need not be so, but we must always ensure that when legislation leaves both Houses it is as clear as we can make it. We do not want useful legislation to be subject to protracted and expensive challenge in the courts. I therefore expect amendments to be made to make the Bill read sensibly.
I hope that the promoter—especially following the debate on the drafting error—is satisfied that there is a definition of dark smoke in the Bill. He mentioned the Ringelman scale, and those of us who have fed coal into fiery locomotive furnaces know what that is. I am the only hon. Member who has carried a copy of the Ringelman scale in his pocket. As a fireman, I put coal in the locomotive and checked whether emissions conformed with the Ringelman scale or whether they were on the darker side, which could mean prosecution. A widely used degree of definition is available. It is used by environmental health officers to check whether a prosecutable offence has occurred. I assume that in some way or another—I have not checked—there is a link in either the 1956 Act or the 1968 Act with the Ringelman scale, so that a prosecution can be certain.
I look forward to further scrutiny of the Bill. If there are omissions, the scrutiny should be long so as to encourage diligence by the Government. However, I support the general principles of the Bill.

Mrs. Virginia Bottomley: I can only say again that it is a source of regret that the drafting error concerning the word "repeal" rather than "amend" in the long title has meant that we have not had sufficient time properly to scrutinise and to discuss all aspects of the Bill or the important effects on individual concerns and grievances in many constituencies.
The hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) referred to Rockwool, in his constituency. I can assure him that we have extended the powers of air pollution control and that the fibre works will be within the province of the inspectorate of pollution.
The hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) speculated, rightly, that the Clean Air Act 1956 gives a clear definition of dark smoke and refers to the Ringelman chart, about which the hon. Gentleman has a particular knowledge. The smoke has to appear to be darker than shade 2.
The hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham) can be reassured about vehicle burning. Instances of vehicle burning have caused great difficulty. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) also spoke of vehicle burning as being a great danger. It is not only the sooty particulates and the lead, but chlorofluorocarbons from the blown foam and the dioxins from the plastics that are dangerous. The Bill hopes to address such problems.
It is possible to burn matter on demolition sites as long as one can demonstrate that there is no other reasonable, safe and practical method of disposing of the matter. The burning must be carried out in such a manner as to minimise the emission of dark smoke and must be under the direct and continuous supervision of the occupier of the premises.
Our Clean Air Acts have been a monumental success. The hon. Member for Ogmore referred to his early days in Acton when he had to wear a mask over his mouth and could scarcely move about in the smogs of winter. They are a thing of the past. Visibility in London has increased from one and a half miles to four miles over the past 40 years. Central London enjoys twice as much sunshine in winter now as it did then, and that is a dramatic success.
I regret that time constraints have made it impossible for me talk about the other issues of air pollution such as the steps to promote the use of unleaded petrol, the move to remove CFCs to save the ozone layer, the gas desulphurisation programme and the introduction of Low-Nox burners, which will tackle the problem of acid rain. The Government are busy and are committed to reducing air pollution in a number of ways.
My hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) has chosen to tackle two particular aspects of air pollution of local and immediate concern. Quite properly, many hon. Members have raised such matters over the years on behalf of their constituents. I should like wholeheartedly to congratulate my hon. Friend on his success.

Mr. Harry Greenway: Will my hon. Friend spend half a minute in dealing with the penalties for private individuals?

Mrs. Bottomley: My hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke outlined the position precisely. The maximum penalty is £2,000, and there is no difference between cases of burning generally and domestic nuisance cases.
My hon. Friend has done a great service to the House in bringing forward the Bill. A great deal of care has gone into its preparation, and I wish it well in its further stages.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.

Orders of the Day — Weights and Measures (Amendment) Bill

Order for consideration in Committee read.

Mr. Ray Whitney: With the authority of the Member in charge of the Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin), I beg to move, That the Bill be considered in Committee on Friday 28 April.

Mr. Ivor Stanbrook: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. When a Bill is taken out before half-past 2, does that need the leave of the House?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): The first Question that is always put is that on when consideration of the Bill is to proceed. It is for the hon. Member in charge of the Bill, or someone else on his behalf, to name a day. The hon. Member for Wycombe named a day, and that procedure is perfectly in order.

Mr. Stanbrook: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I understand that. That is the procedure which is followed after half-past 2. Does it apply before half-past 2?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The same procedure applies before half-past 2 to any Order of the Day.

Mr. Stanbrook: Therefore, before half-past 2 it is possible for the motion on the Bill to be moved and for a debate on any stage to proceed. Apparently, it is in your hands, Sir, to put the Question to the House as to when next the Bill will be considered. That is a different matter entirely.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The Member in charge of the Bill can decide whether he wishes it to proceed. Precisely the same applies to Government Bills. What has happened today on this Bill has been in order.

Mr. Stanbrook: What form of authority from the Member in charge of the Bill is required to enable another Back Bencher to proceed with it? Is there any formality about the passing of that authority?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: On these occasions, the Chair is always prepared to accept the good faith of an hon. Member when he says that he is speaking on behalf of another hon. Member. The Chair accepts that automatically.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I should like to move, on behalf of the Prime Minister, that the Bill on Monday to repeal the dock labour scheme be not proceeded with.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member had better wait until Monday and see how he gets on then.

Orders of the Day — Sunday Trading (Reform) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. Steve Norris: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The problem with the position in which I find myself is that one prepares for a speech of not more than three and a half hours and not less than four minutes and, invariably, the latter transpires. Because of this morning's efforts—no doubt well meant—we have about 35 minutes to talk about this important subject. I shall endeavour to truncate my observations and allow other hon. Members to participate. I hope that those hon. Members who follow me will, in the same spirit, allow as many colleagues as possible to speak.
I am sure that I need not remind the House that the present Sunday trading law is essentially that regulated by the Shops Act 1950 and a number of subsequent small amendments. The Shops Act is riddled with anomalies and
does not reflect in any sense modern social patterns. Schedules 5 and 6 show that that is nonsense. Schedule 5 provides:
Transactions for the purposes of which a shop may be open in England and Wales for the serving of customers on Sunday".
That includes
meals or refreshments whether or not for consumption at the shop at which they are sold, but not including the sale of fried fish and chips at a fried fish and chip shop".
One can have one's fish and chips, but not from a fish and chip shop, as anyone born north of the Trent knows, is the only place at which one should ever eat fish and chips. As was the spirit in those days, one can buy "intoxicating liquours" and "tobacco and smokers' requisites". One can buy "flowers, fruit and vegetables". In particular, according to schedule 5, one may include mushrooms in that purchase. That is an important addition, which has vexed many a council for many a day. One may buy
milk and cream, not including tinned or dried milk or cream, but including clotted cream whether sold in tins or otherwise;
I shall pass over what clotted cream in tins is like, but, if it can be found, one may buy it.
In the spirit of schedule 5, and in order to allay the fears of those ecologically-minded hon. Members who care about such matters, if they want to travel here by horse on a Sunday they may buy
fodder for horses, mules, ponies and donkeys"—
if they happen to come by donkey—
at any farm, stables, hotel or inn.
If people want to buy fodder for a donkey, they should do so not from a roadside trader because that would be illegal, but from an inn, which would be legal.
If I had time to make a three-and-a-half-hour speech, it would be mildly amusing to go through the list in greater detail. However, I shall summarise it by saying that the present law allows one to buy fresh but not dried milk, newspapers but not toilet paper, car batteries but not torch batteries, and fan belts but not ladies' tights. Everyone knows that if a fan belt breaks, by far the best way of restarting the car is to buy a pair of ladies' tights and use them as a fan belt.
My hon. Friend the Member for——

Mrs. Teresa Gorman: Billericay.

Mr. Norris: I am glad to see that my hon. Friend has been there long enough to remember the name of her constituency. She has probably used the odd pair of tights in that way and should know that she can buy a fan belt on a Sunday but not a pair of tights.
I am sure that this will not affect my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman), but she can buy gin but not a baby's bottle, Easter eggs but not fresh eggs. She can buy car oil but not cooking oil. The present legislation is a complete and absolute nonsense. I need go no further with schedules 5 and 6 or the Shops Act 1950. It is an extraordinarily patronising piece of legislation which Conservative Members should be prepared to see the back of once and for all.
In addition, patterns of life have changed considerably over the past 40 years. I shall pass over the question of the standards of religious observance. Clearly, there are higher living standards, which have created a higher demand for leisure activities, particularly gardening, and repairing and improving homes. The DIY boom is important in connection with the Bill. Much DIY activity involves going to stores to purchase the goods, which involves breaking the law.
There has also been a change in women's approach to work. In 1951, only 26 per cent. of married women were in employment. Now the figure is 61 per cent.

Mr. Ivor Stanbrook: rose——

Mr. Norris: In order to give as many hon. Members as possible the opportunity to speak, I shall not take interventions.
The enforcement of the present law is not merely nonsense. The list on its own can be funny, and seen as one of those amusing hilarities such as the existence of the death penalty for witchcraft. However, enforcement of such law is outrageous. There are about 420 enforcing authorities in England and Wales, and it is estimated that about 20 per cent. of them bother to enforce the law on Sundays. It is not only extraordinarily unreasonable that whether one is fined or injuncted and restrained from selling on Sundays depends in which local authority area one happens to live, but grossly unfair.
I know from my experience as the hon. Member for Oxford, East that a shop on one side of the road under a a local authority that was keen to enforce the Act had to compete with a shop on the other side of the road in the area of another local authority that said, "We do not give much of a damn and have neither the resources nor the inclination to enforce the Act." About 26 per cent. of turnover can accrue to a business on a Sunday in these selected trades, and it is outrageously unfair that local authorities should discriminate in that way.
There is a further idiocy. Under article 30 of the treaty of Rome there has been a reference by the courts to the European Court of decisions on the granting of injunctions. That means that existing legislation may be overtaken by decision of the European Court. If the European Court rules, as it is invited to do, that the Shops Act 1950 conflicts with article 30 of the treaty of Rome, which deals with restraint of trade, then whatever the attitude of some hon. Members towards Europe, I for one shall say thank goodness that Europe can introduce a little sanity into our proceedings.
On the matter of sanity, I should like to quote Councillor John Denison, the chairman of the Association of District Councils' general services committee. On hearing about the European reference, he said:
This is the last straw. The present law is totally discredited and every effort by districts to enforce the law is thwarted even by the courts. These cases show that it is imperative for Government to take urgent action to reform the law.
The law is an abject mess.

Mrs. Gorman: The law is an ass.

Mr. Norris: My hon. Friend is right. What should we do about it? The Conservative manifesto was clear. We committed ourselves in that manifesto to bring sense and consistency to the law. I intend to remind all Ministers of that and not just my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Home Office who has given up some important engagements to be here for the debate. I remind my hon. Friends of that commitment and hope that the Government will see it through.
The last Bill in 1986 was hijacked by a minority who impressed their opinions on some of my hon. Friends who, like me, were in extraordinarily unsafe seats. They each received perhaps 100 letters in favour of the system from some of the vast majority of people who already used it, perhaps without knowing that they were abusing it, and could not be exercised to do anything about it at that time. I suspect that things might be different if we had another opportunity to debate such a Bill.
Complete deregulation is the only logical answer. In a speech in his constituency on 10 February the Minister of State, Home Office said that the Government had not changed their views on the issue. He said:
We still believe that the wholly logical solution is that of total deregulation. But we have to recognise that this was not acceptable to Parliament.
If, for whatever reason—and we can all speculate—Parliament has said that total deregulation is not its wish, we must not insult Parliament by reintroducing the 1986 Bill. We must consider the real and serious objections of some hon. Members to that Bill.
If we do not want to go down the path of total deregulation, we have three options. One is to go down the path of a new list, but a new list would be absurd because it would instantly be arbitrary, immediately anomalous and increasingly ridiculous. There would be great difficulties in enforcing a new list system. Huge resources would be needed to visit every shop that was entitled to be open, because it sold some items that were on the exempt list, to make sure that it was not selling items that were not on the list. That is also nonsense in manpower terms. We will need an army of inspectors and an army of fraught policemen running around deciding whether someone has had the temerity to buy tights or is buying fodder for his horse from an unrecognised inn or farm. How awful that would be.
We could, of course, allow any shop to choose its own restricted hours—perhaps to open for six or seven hours on a Sunday—but I believe that that suffers from the same problems of enforceability and is an avenue down which we should not go.
My Bill would allow any shop to open from noon to 6 pm. It would allow an extension for small shops, because I believe that, on either side of the argument it is generally recognised that there needs to be some protection for small shops. I was advised, that, because of my inadequate

drafting, the worker protection clauses in my original draft of the Bill were inconsistent with the wording of the long title. Therefore, I give the House my commitment that, if it approves my Bill on Second Reading, I shall introduce similar worker protection clauses to those contained in the 1986 Bill. I believe that that is the solution that gets nearest to common sense. It was supported by a majority of those participating in the polls. It also has least opposition of any of the proposed schemes. Its advantages are that it is enforceable, that there are no lists, that it is fair and that it retains the special character of Sunday, in that it clearly requires the closure of shops at certain times and a different pattern to be be established from that that applies on the other six days of the week.
I will not proceed further other than to summarise the words of an editorial in the Evening Standard some time ago, which said:
Nowadays you can join a union, run your school, buy your council house or own shares if you so desire. But if you want to buy your baked beans or your wallpaper on the way to church on Sunday, you can't. The outdated and bizarre law preventing Sunday trading remains on the statute books … Ministers should have the courage to reintroduce their Bill at the earliest opportunity. Sunday trading is not a wrong but a right.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Tim Renton): It would be as well if I intervened at this stage—with apologies to hon. Members on both sides of the House—because if I do not intervene now, in the short space of time available, it may be impossible for me to do so at all.

Mr. Ray Powell: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I do not challenge who you call, because that is not for us to challenge. I realise that it is a Private Member's Bill, but it is custom and practice to call an hon. Member from one side of the House and then an hon. Member from the other side of the House. I am rather disturbed that you did not seek to catch the eye of Opposition Members, because we had declared in previous debates this morning our interest in getting rid of the previous debate so that we could get on to this one. I am somewhat appalled at the fact that you have called two hon. Members from the Conservative side when Opposition Members would also wish to contribute to this emotive debate. Those of us who are sponsored by the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers are worried that we might not be afforded the opportunity to speak on the issue because of the time factor.

Mr. Stanbrook: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It would he unusual to call a Minister immediately after a Back Bench Member has just moved his own Private Member's Bill. This is a Private Member's day. The Government have no business to intervene so soon.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Members who have raised these points are very experienced. They will know that it is customary to call Ministers when they rise. The Minister has risen and I have called him.

Mr. Renton: I offered my apologies to hon. Members on both sides of the House. I shall be extremely brief in the hope that both the hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) will be able to make their contributions during the next 17 minutes. However, I must say that the


comments of the hon. Member for Ogmore smelt somewhat of hypocrisy, as the Labour Opposition's record in promoting any attempt to reform Sunday trading so far has not only been one of total neglect, but every Labour Member who was present in the House voted against our Bill in 1986. As the record of the Labour party on this has been one of total ignorance and unawareness of the needs and wishes of the consumer, I cannot accept the hon. Gentleman's objections.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Norris) for giving us the chance to examine an issue which continues to command a great deal of parliamentary and public attention. It is particularly helpful that my hon. Friend, in a concise and well-phrased speech, has presented a Bill which is simple, straightforward and avoids extremes. That ought to encourage rational and sensible discussion.
I fully agree with my hon. Friend's analysis of the difficulties that face proposals for legislation. There is virtually universal agreement that the present law is badly in need of reform and contains indefensible anomalies which limit public choice and no longer reflect modern needs. Equally, there are wide divisions about the steps that should be taken to achieve reform—and the practical difficulties of achieving it without creating equally indefensible anomalies, often of a very complex nature, are legion. I have found that to be so in my 20 months at the Home Office, in meetings with a great many people representing both sides of the issue, and in my attempts to find a halfway house acceptable not just in the House but to the vast majority of our countrymen. At every turn one is reminded of the sheer difficulty of arriving at a workable compromise.
One reason is that, at heart, none of us wants all seven days of the week to be exactly the same. That would imply a grey monotony and a drab uniformity of which Orwell's thought police would certainly approve. We all want the rhythm of our lives to change on at least one day of the week—be it Friday for the Moslem, Saturday for the Jew, Or Sunday for the Christian. For at least one day of the week, those who live in towns want the high street to be quiet and the pedestrian centre to be peaceful. They would like an absence of heavy duty lorries parked on the double yellow lines and blocking narrow streets as they unload their goods, with coaches and cars queueing behind and honking their horns in irritation. At the same time, as my hon. Friend points out, consumers want on that same idyllic day regularly to buy a newspaper and petrol, to take the family out for a meal, enjoy a game of sport, buy the extra food needed because two of one's children are unexpectedly arriving for supper, visit the DIY store to buy paint and brushes, or the garden centre to purchase plants, fertiliser, a spare trowel, and so on.
It is because of the normal demands of average consumers—certainly not wicked sybarites—that about 5 million people already work on Sunday. That is so often forgotten. It is because of those same demands that Scotland—a more Sabbatarian country than England—imposes no controls whatever on Sunday shopping. If one walks down Princes street or Sauchiehall street on a Sunday, one certainly does not get the impression that Jezebel has taken over. The churches are fuller while some shops are open and some are not without any bother at all.
That is why I find the attitude taken by Scottish right hon. and hon. Members—not one of whom is present in the Chamber this afternoon—so extraordinary. In my experience, the Scots do not usually hesitate to extol the superior virtues of arrangements north of the border where they differ from ours. On this issue, however, they show a strange reluctance to do so. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling), for example, who is a Shadow spokesman on home affairs, and who is not in his place this afternoon, can stroll through his constituency on a Sunday and buy anything that he chooses—yet he and his Scottish right hon. and hon. Friends vote against giving consumers in England and Wales the same right. What is the reason for the hon. Gentleman's reticence? One can only assume that he and all Scottish Labour Members are creatures of the Labour Whips Office first, Scotsmen second, and friends of the consumer a very poor third. They will not speak up for a system that operates successfully in their own country. Their opposition to reform in England is a hypocritical sham, and their arguments are just so much humbug.
I return to the notable omission from my hon. Friend's proposals, on which he touched in his remarks. In my judgment, the eventual Bill must provide safeguards for shop workers working on Sundays. I note that if my hon. Friend's Bill goes into Committee he will make certain that clauses to provide safeguards for workers would be included.

Mr. Barry Sheerman: rose——

Mr. Renton: I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman, who has only just come into the Chamber, as there is very little time available.
Whatever happens to this Bill—it is clear that Labour Members are not at present inclined to help it on its way—I should make it clear that we are committed to finding a way of making sense of the present unsatisfactory position. I have every sympathy for retailers who find the present law confusing, anomalous and inconsistent, and who cannot meet the known needs and wishes of their customers without running the risk of breaking the law.

Mr. Ray Powell: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Minister has just said that Labour Members were not trying to help the Bill on its way. As you are aware, Mr. Deputy Speaker, arrangements were made before this debate so that it could start. If those arrangements had not been made through the usual channels, the debate would not have been allowed to begin. The Minister should withdraw his remark, as he was fully conversant with those negotiations.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That is a point of argument, not a point of order for the Chair.

Mr. Renton: It is possible, for example, that the Bill points to the next stage in the process of bringing sense and order to this obscure and complicated corner of the law. However, we need to be clear about its objectives for Sunday mornings. I am slightly fearful that the limit of 3,000 sq ft may be a little too wide and might have too great an impact on the number of shops that stayed open in the High street, but that is another point that we could consider in Committee. I know that the Shopping Hours Reform Council, under the leadership of Sir Basil Feldman, is anxious to take that further, and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I will be pleased to give the


council all the help that we can. I take this opportunity pay tribute to the work of the council and Sir Basil for the dedicated and conscientious way in which they have attempted to build a consensus in favour of change. Their achievement in the areas of agreement that now exist has been considerable, and they continue to play an important role in finding an acceptable basis for legislation. I encourage all concerned to respond to their efforts.
The law places the responsibility for enforcement fairly and squarely on local authorities. It is a matter for their discretion and judgment, and, although current references to the European Court are relevant to the future status of the law, there is clearly no reason why they should get in the way of the ordinary process of enforcing the 1950 Act in the courts when local authorities think it appropriate.

Mrs. Gorman: rose——

Mr. Renton: With respect to my hon. Friend, I am about to conclude my remarks. I hope that she may yet have a chance to catch your eye before 2.30, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
The question of the reform of Sunday trading is unfinished business for the Government but, as I have said before, we are in no hurry to finish it until we have a consensus which commands maximum support in the House and throughout the country on a subject that is certainly dear to all Conservative hearts, even if it is widely ignored by the Labour party. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest for the proposals that he has briefly put today, and I wish him well in his efforts.

Mr. Alan Meale: I note with interest that because of the time that the Minister has taken up—and taken away from Back Benchers—he is part and parcel of the probable talking out of the Bill, which contradicts the argument that he has put.
The Bill's explanatory memorandum states that part of its purpose is to abolish the restrictions on premises
where a retail trade or business is carried on to serve customers from the hours of twelve noon to 6.00 pm
Hon. Members of all parties are aware that we have recently had a debate on a Bill about Sunday sport and that those provisions would have enabled some retail trading to take place on that day. As the explanatory memorandum points out, if the Bill were allowed to proceed today, it would cause yet another anomaly within the racing industry. That is an important point because it would mean that betting shops in the high streets of Britain would be able to open on Sundays. Conservative Members might say that that is irrelevant because there would not be any horse racing because hon. Members, and especially Opposition Members, managed to prevent a Bill that would have allowed that.
However, because of the new technology and the investment that has been made by those in the bookmaking industry outside the United Kingdom, because of SIS—Satellite Information Services—and news satellite services, racing could be beamed live to British betting shops. If the betting shops in our high streets were open, clearly the workers in those shops would have to work on Sundays. That would change the Bill and the

purpose of these arguments in the House, which has clearly rejected the arguments for Sunday sport. Anyone who has any doubt about that need only consider the investments that have been made by the big four betting chains in Southern Ireland. In the past 18 months the four big betting houses of Ladbroke and Co, Coral's, Mecca Bookmakers Ltd and Hill's have purchased more than 250 betting shops in Southern Ireland. Because SIS is now available, it is possible to beam overseas races live to this country. The betting industry has also made major investments in other countries. Negotiations are currently taking place to purchase betting and gambling rights in Belgium and France. Betting rights have already been agreed in California and Ohio in the United States. British betting chains are already working towards the possibility of beaming races live, at all hours of the day and night, which would allow betting in the high streets in Britain. That is a serious matter.
Another serious concern relates to workers' rights in the retail trade. We must question whether those who have prepared the Bill have considered its effect on people who work in shops. I do not think that that has been thought through. The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Norris), who promoted the Bill, has rightly pointed out——

Mr. Win Griffiths: Does my hon. Friend agree that the hasty and ill-thought-out nature of the Bill has been shown up by the fact that its promoter had to admit that there were problems about protecting the rights of workers?

Mr. Meale: I entirely and absolutely agree. The argument that at some later stage the hon. Member for Epping Forest would try to ensure that protection clauses were inserted into the Bill is unacceptable to hon. Members of all parties. Members of Parliament are not shop workers and do not have to face the possibility of working a seven-day week. Many hon. Members will argue that they work a seven-day week and 24 hours of the day, but as a fellow Member of Parliament I deny that that happens. I think that Members of Parliament have good terms and conditions. They do not have to put up with regularised work over a seven-day period, which people on low pay and with bad conditions have to face in other industries.

Mr. Ray Powell: Does my hon. Friend recall the Minister's words about the Government's attitude to the Bill and to shops legislation? My hon. Friend has participated on numerous occasions in debates on shops legislation. Does he recall that on many occasions the House has rejected any suggestion that legislation should be enacted to allow Sunday trading?

Mr. Meale: That is right. Hon. Members have to ask themselves why the Government are seeking to introduce Sunday trading legislation by means of a private Member's Bill. It is important to remember that fact because, although it is the normal practice, the Minister did not allow individual Back-Bench Members——

It being half-past Two o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Private Members' Bills

ABORTION (FINANCIAL BENEFITS) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 5 May.

CHANNEL TUNNEL ACT 1987 (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): Not moved.

TROPICAL HARDWOODS (CONTROL) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Not printed.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 12 May.

ELIMINATION OF POVERTY IN RETIREMENT BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 5 May.

Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I did not hear an objection, although I am sure that you did. We have had this discussion before. I should be grateful for your advice on the subject in this Session of Parliament. The Bill has been moved six times but it has never been debated. It has been objected to on every occasion by the Trappist tendency on the Treasury Bench. It would be helpful if 9 million pensioners knew who it is that does not want the Bill to be debated in the Chamber and who wants to block any discusson of a measure that would eliminate poverty among the elderly.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: We have had this discussion many times before at 2.30 on Fridays. The procedure that has been followed is perfectly in order. The hon. Gentleman will recollect that the Select Committee on Procedure considered the matter fairly recently and recommended that there should be no change in the procedure.

POLL TAX (RESTORATION OF INDIVIDUAL PRIVACY) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day?

Mr. Harry Cohen: Now.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The Question is, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Objection taken. Second Reading what day?

Mr. Cohen: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We must deal with this first. I asked, Second Reading what day?

Mr. Cohen: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Under the procedures of the House, I moved the Bill and there was no objection. You should have said that the Bill

had been given a Second Reading, and the next stage would have been the Committee stage, but you did not do that.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I can deal quickly with the hon. Gentleman's point. An objection at any time during the proceedings is in order. It does not necessarily have to be when the title of the Bill is first read out. There was an objection as soon as I put the Question on Second Reading. Consequently I asked the hon. Gentleman "Second Reading what day?"

Mr. Cohen: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Can it be right——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. There can be no further points of order.

Mr. Cohen: rose——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have explained the procedure to the hon. Gentleman. He has heard the explanation on more than one occasion at 2.30. I repeat that when I put the Question on Second Reading objection was taken. According to our procedure, that means that the Bill is not able to proceed. All that I am then able to do is to ask the hon. Gentleman to name a day for Second Reading.

Mr. Tony Banks: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Will you explain exactly how we move through the various stages of a private Member's Bill? As I understand it, if no objection is taken when the mover has nominated today for Second Reading, we have moved on to the Second Reading stage. If there was no objection, we should have moved on to Committee——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I understand the hon. Gentleman's point. In this case, the objection was made when I put the Question on Second Reading. Had the Question been agreed to, the Bill would have received a Second Reading. But the objection was taken before that stage was reached and as a consequence the objection stands.

Mr. Corbyn: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I shall listen to the hon. Gentleman, but I remind him that we have other business. We have been through this on many occasions on Fridays. I understand the frustration of hon. Members, but I must remind them that the Select Committee on Procedure looked at the matter fairly carefully and they may wish to refresh their minds and look at the reasons that the Select Committee gave for not recommending alterations to our procedures.

Mr. Corbyn: I share your concern about the procedures, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I hope that the Select Committee will reconsider the procedure for Friday afternoon objections. We are not dealing with that problem at the moment. My hon. Friend the Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) quite properly and correctly moved the Bill and none of us heard any objection——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I distinctly heard objection. Therefore, I said, "Objection taken", as I am obliged to do.

Mr. Corbyn: rose

Mr. Cohen: rose——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I shall not listen to any more points of order as they are getting dangerously close to arguments with the judgment of the Chair.

CHLOROFLUOROCARBONS (CONTROL) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Not moved.

ABOLITION OF DOMESTIC RATES ETC. (SCOTLAND) ACT (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 12 May.

INDECENT DISPLAYS (NEWSPAPERS AND WORKPLACES) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 21 April.

AGE OF LEGAL CAPACITY (SCOTLAND) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 21 April.

GAMING MACHINES (PROHIBITION ON USE BY PERSONS UNDER EIGHTEEN) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 21 April.

RIDERS OF EQUINE ANIMALS (WEARING OF PROTECTIVE HEADGEAR) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 21 April.

COUNTING WOMEN'S UNREMUNERATED WORK BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The Bill has not been printed, so I cannot put the Question.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 21 April.

BRITISH RACING COMMISSION BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 21 April.

CONTROL OF POLLUTION (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Not moved.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That, at the sitting on Monday 17th April, notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 15 (Prayers against statutory instruments, etc. (negative procedure)), Motions in the name of Mr. Neil Kinnock relating to Education may be

proceeded with, though opposed, for one and a half hours after the first of them has been entered upon; and if proceedings thereon have not been previously disposed of, Mr. Speaker shall then put the Question already proposed from the Chair.—[Mr. Alan Howarth.]

Mr. Alan Meale: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was asked to give a date for the Second Reading of my Bill——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman gave me a date which was 21 April, and that has been recorded.

Ms. Mildred Gordon: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Counting Women's Unremunerated Work Bill was presented behind the Chair and, therefore, has been printed. Does that not count?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: There has to be a printed text of the Bill before I am able to put the Question.

Ms. Gordon: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It was presented as a Bill behind the Chair in the previous Session.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The previous Session does not count. There must be a printed text of the Bill in this Session, and my understanding is that there is not one. Therefore, I am not able to put the Question.

Mr. Corbyn: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Can you tell me the position on the Poll Tax (Restoration of Individual Privacy) Bill, which is before us today?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: If a day is named for the Second Reading of any Bill that has been deferred today, the Bill will appear on the Order Paper for that day. That does not necessarily mean that it will he reached. I understand that the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) did not name a day for Second Reading, but he can do so by giving an instruction to the Table Office.

Mr. Corbyn: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. My question related partly to that and partly to the present status of the Bill. Has the Bill passed its Second Reading and Committee stages so that when it returns it will be for its Report stage, or was it blocked by the Trappists on the Conservative Benches?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I realise that this is a complicated matter, so I shall expand a little on the procedure. Let me read from the report of the Select Committee on Procedure which explained this point. Paragraph 70 states:
When the titles of private Members' Bills are read over … on a Friday, instead of rising to speak or to object, it is open to Members to remain seated but to give their voices as `No' when the question is put.

Mr. Cohen: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. That is not what happened. No Conservative Member said anything. Therefore, the Bill——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: What I read out is exactly what happened.

Mr. Cohen: I dispute that.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order: I am on my feet. I realise the hon. Gentleman's frustration. We have been following a well-established procedure. It applies to Government orders on occasions and to private Bills on other occasions. At the moment, the hon. Members who are raising points of order have not managed to persuade the Procedure Committee or the House that the procedure


should be changed. It is my job in the Chair to ensure that our present rules and regulations are observed. That is what I have been doing this afternoon.

Mr. Cohen: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. What arrangements will you make to rewrite "Erskine May" on this issue, because you have changed the rules in your ruling today? The Bill received——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have made no changes in the rules. It is open to the hon. Gentleman, if he so wishes, to put the matter to the Procedure Committee.

Maternity Services (East Lancashire)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Alan Howarth.]

Mr. Ken Hargreaves: I welcome the opportunity to draw the House's attention to the concern of right hon. and hon. Members representing east Lancashire constituencies about the inadequate maternity services in the area covered by the Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley district health authority. The concern that I shall outline is shared by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Waddington) and my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Mr. Trippier) but, because of their ministerial positions, they are unable to take part in the debate. The concern is also shared by the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) who is unable to be present because of a longstanding engagement in Cheshire. His interest in the need for improved maternity services is clearly shown by the fact that he raised the matter in an Adjournment debate two years ago.
I wish to make an urgent plea for reconsideration of the place in the North West region's capital programme of the new maternity unit for Blackburn, Hyndburn, and Ribble Valley district health authority. The provision of a centralised maternity unit has been considered urgent since the 1970s, and in 1979 was recognised as the highest priority of the former Lancashire health authority. The regional health authority incorporated the scheme as phase IIIA of a development programme for Queen's Park hospital. After much discussion, it was eventually included in the regional capital programme in 1985, with a start date of 1990–91, which was subsequently put back to 1992–93. As a result of the changes in the approval process, the current status of the scheme and its start date are not known. Current and future problems are so acute that urgent action is needed if a crisis is to be avoided.
At present, district maternity services are provided on three sites—the main consultant unit at Queen's Park hospital, which has 67 beds, the GP unit at Victoria Accrington hospital, which has 15 beds, and the GP unit at Bramley Meade, Whalley, which has 20 beds. The GP unit at Darwen was closed in 1988 because of a substantial fall in the number of births. The authority decided that staff and resources could be used more efficiently by providing a temporary GP unit with 10 beds at Queen's Park hospital.
The problem is accentuated by the fact that between 1978 and 1988 the proportion of births in GP units fell from 30 per cent. to 9 per cent. This change, together with a rise in birth rate, led to an increase in the number of births at Queen's Park hospital from 2,409 in 1978 to 3,591 in 1988—a rise of 49 per cent. Latest projections show that the number of births to residents of east Lancashire will continue to increase to more than 4,500 by 1993. If the current trend continues, most of the births will be at Queen's Park hospital.
The total number of beds and staffing levels in the district reflect the regional average, but unfortunately the combination of a rising birth rate, a three-site operation and a 20 per cent. deficiency in consultant beds has placed enormous pressure on staff and facilities at Queen's Park hospital. Clinicians and midwives are extremely concerned


that the work load has increased to a point at which an effective and safe service can no longer be maintained. In 1985, while the number of births per midwife was 26·88 in the region as a whole and 29·6 in the district, it was a massive 49·4 at Queen's Park hospital—80 per cent. higher than the regional average.
The unit at Queen's Park hospital is clearly extremely busy and junior medical staff cover is inadequate. There is only one registrar for obstetrics and gynaecology. I believe that no other district which delivers 4,000 babies per year has only one registrar. The problem is further compounded by the fact that the registrar has commitments at other sites, particularly Blackburn royal infirmary.
I referred earlier to the debate initiated two years ago by the hon. Member for Blackburn. He reminded the House at that time that:
The ante-natal clinic is half the size needed for its load. On some mornings 100 patients wait to see doctors, but only four examination rooms arc curtained off and
there are only two small waiting areas
so some patients must wait in the corridors and some must stand. It is bad enough having to stand to wait for medical treatment when one is otherwise able-bodied, but for women in an advanced stage of pregnancy it is no joke … Such is the pressure on beds that no mother stays after birth for more than 24 hours unless she or her baby is ill."—[Official Report, 22 April 1987; Vol. 114, c. 767.]
In the two years since that debate, matters have not improved. The special care unit is on the lower ground floor, away from the main area. Only one lift serves the entire facility, sanitary accommodation is in a poor state, and there is no anaesthetic or recovery room. The position is not only wholly unsatisfactory, but grossly wasteful and inefficient.
The figures and examples cited give some idea of the unsatisfactory conditions that patients have to endure and under which the staff have to work. But for the dedication of the excellent medical, midwifery, nursing and ancillary staff at Queen's Park hospital, Accrington Victoria hospital and Bramley Meade hospital, the service would have broken down many years ago. It is sometimes difficult to escape the feeling that the district health authority is being penalised because it has made do with facilities that would not be acceptable elsewhere.
As the starting date of phase IIIA is unknown, the district health authority has had to consider interim measures. In February, the authority decided that bookings for deliveries could no longer be accepted from patients resident outside the district. There is a real danger that bookings for deliveries even from patients resident in the district will have to be refused and that mothers will be sent to hospitals miles away. The district health authority is well aware of that possibility and because it would be totally unacceptable if that happened it has recently agreed that improved delivery facilities and a temporary ward will have to be constructed at Queen's Park hospital in the near future. That is not only unsatisfactory and a poor use of the money available, but carries with it the risk that once we have a temporary ward, poor though it may be, we shall once again be seen to be making do, which may cause further delay in providing the much overdue unit at Queen's Park hospital.
The maternity service in Blackburn is already under pressure, with a high number of births, a high proportion of low weight births and a consequently heavy work load in the central unit. The service is already operating under

conditions of considerable risk. The region's guidelines for the operation of general practitioner maternity units cannot be met, which has serious legal implications. The birth rate is forecast to rise significantly by 1993. If that happens and the decline in the number of births at the GP unit continues, the unit at Queen's Park hospital will be unable to cope. The new maternity unit will enable the district health authority to deal with its work load and will allow scarce resources in midwifery and medical staffing to be used more efficiently and with greater cost effectiveness. I ask the regional health authority to recognise the urgency of the situation and to support the view of Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley district health authority that the only solution to the impending crisis—which could have serious legal implications—is to bring forward the new maternity unit in its capital programme. Building on the unit should be brought forward to start in 1989.
I hope that the Minister will feel able to say that he agrees with hon. Members representing constituencies in east Lancashire who say that the present situation is unacceptable. I hope, too, that he will do all that he can to encourage and persuade the regional health authority to find some way of ensuring that this important project is given urgent priority and that a date for the start of construction is decided as soon as possible, so that my constituents and those of other east Lancashire Members may benefit from a safe, efficient and effective service.
I assure my hon. Friend the Minister that we appreciate the enormous improvements in National Health Service provision in east Lancashire in the past 10 years. There has been a £4·5 million redevelopment at Queen's Park with 54 adult acute beds and 46 children's beds replacing wards that were appalling; £300,000 has been allocated for a renal unit at Accrington Victoria hospital and £200,000 has been provided to upgrade the theatres at Blackburn. Those are only three recent examples. Nevertheless, grateful as we are, we should be failing in our duty as Members for east Lancashire if we did not do everything in our power to ensure the urgent provision of the long-awaited maternity unit at Queen's Park hospital.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Roger Freeman): Before dealing with the detail of this important subject, I should congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Hargreaves) on his success in the ballot. I am aware of the close interest that he has taken over many years in the provision of health care services for his constituents. This debate is yet another example of his continued presure on behalf of the people of east Lancashire. My hon. Friend is no doubt aware that the need for better maternity services in east Lancashire has been accepted by both the district and the regional health authorities. I, too, accept the need for improved maternity services and I hope that my hon. Friend is convinced that the Department of Health takes the matter seriously.
The maternity services for east Lancashire are provided' by the Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley health authority. I hope that the House will allow me to comment briefly on the provision of patient services generally before responding to the points put to me about maternity services as it is important to set maternity provision in the context of hospital services generally.
The Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley health authority provides the full range of health care services for a local population of 268,000 people. The health authority's record on achieving improved patient services in recent years is good. Comparing the latest available figures for 1987–88 with those for 1982 we see that the in-patient annual treatment rate is up by 17·3 per cent. from 36,926 to 43,315, the outpatient rate is up by 18 per cent. from 158,000 to 187,000, and the number of persons treated by community nurses in the district is up by 33·2 per cent. from 65,000 to 86,000. Those figures, of course, do not show the increases in the quality of care which have also taken place.
Perhaps a more tangible sign to the local community of the improvement in services locally is the local building programme, which is well advanced, to modernise and upgrade buildings and equipment at Queen's Park hospital, Blackburn. The first phase has been completed and took the first patients in 1987. As my hon. Friend knows, this provided 46 paediatric medical beds and 56 acute medical beds and a range of other patient facilities, all at a cost of £4·6 million. Construction of phase II is due to start this year and will provide 76 geriatric beds and 50 day places and support services, including a new catering department. The total cost will be £8·3 million. Those new buildings and the facilities that they contain will ensure that the improvements in patient care achieved in recent years will continue well into the future, but the building programme must not end there.
With regard to the specific subject raised by my hon. Friend, it may be helpful to the House if I first give some of the background to the maternity services available in east Lancashire. Current district provision is located on three sites—Queen's Park hospital, Blackburn, whch has 67 consultant beds, 10 GP beds and seven delivery suites; Bramley Meade maternity home, Whalley, which has 20 GP beds and two delivery suites; and Accrington Victoria hospital, which has 15 GP beds and two delivery suites. The two smaller GP units are nine miles and six miles respectively from the main unit at Queen's Park hospital.
Taken overall, the district has about the right number of maternity beds, but changes in the pattern of work between the GP units and Queen's Park hospital have put the main unit at Queen's Park under considerable strain. I agree about the way in which the pattern of work has changed in the past few years and I agree with my hon. Friend's forecast of the number of births likely to occur in the next decade. The increased pressure at Queen's Park hospital, Blackburn is due not wholly but partly to the desire of general practitioners to refer expectant mothers to a large hospital with a full range of maternity facilites available, and the Department of Health understands that trend, which occurs throughout the country.
That brings me back to the building programme for the district. The solution to the problem is a further phase IIIA of building at Queen's Park hospital to provide extra

maternity beds on the main district general hospital site to replace those presently located at the GP units. The health authority is aware however, that even if the phase IIIA capital development could be brought forward it would not be ready in time to solve the immediate problem.
I can reassure my hon. Friend that the Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley Health Authority is aware of the need for immediate action to deal with the problem that I have outlined. The authority has given it the highest priority for action. I know that the full health authority has discussed it at both its last two meetings and that the district general manager has met regional health authority officers to discuss what action can be taken. At its meeting on 5 April, the district health authority made a decision on a further, more substantial measure to deal with the immediate effects of the problem. In conjunction with the regional health authority, it has agreed to erect a temporary building at the Queen's Park hospital as soon as possible. Final decisions have not been made about the extra facilities that this will allow, but it is hoped that it will contain 19 extra beds and two more delivery suites.
I am pleased to announce that, as an exceptional gesture, the North Western regional health authority has agreed to provide additional capital funding of £450,000 to the district to make that building possible, and I am advised that the building will be well founded and of an acceptable quality. It will not be temporary or makeshift but will, I hope, have a long-term use. It will not be a permanent solution to the problem, to which I shall now turn, but it will produce an immediate expansion in the facilities available in the short term.
Clearly the measures that I have outlined must be regarded as short term. I understand that both the district and regional health authorities regard the completion of phase IIIA as the permanent solution. The comments made by my hon. Friend add further weight to that view. When my predecessor spoke about phase IIIA in the Adjournment debate two years ago, she mentioned a start date for it in 1992–93. In the light of the points put to me today, I shall ask the regional health authority to advise me of the implications of achieving that. I mean the implications for the capital programme for the region, the revenue implications for the district and the potential closure decisions on the two smaller facilities to which GPs refer their patients for maternity care. I shall then discuss the details with the regional chairman when I am in the region next month.
In concluding my response to the points put to me during the debate on this important subject I pay tribute to the medical, midwifery and other support staff providing maternity services in east Lancashire. I know that my hon. Friend will join me in that tribute. We all value highly the extra efforts which I know that they have made to safeguard the standard of care that they give to mothers during the present period of difficulties which I hope will shortly be put right permanently.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at two minutes past Three o'clock.